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A key challenge for exporters and international marketing/purchasing managers is formulating strategic responses to deal with geopolitical disruptions during a trade war between superpowers. While past studies provide insightful analysis of the influence of changes in the institutional environment (regulatory pressures) on national and firm-level trade activities, they tend to ignore the association between inward (sourcing) or outward (export) international activities of firms during a trade war. In this study, we aim to explore various strategic options employed by third-party SME exporters in response to geopolitical disruptions, institutional pressures and constraints during a trade war.

We adopted a qualitative methodology and applied a hermeneutical approach in collecting, analysing and theorising interview findings. We conducted interviews with 15 owners or senior managers from 12 Australian and New Zealand exporters that exported or sourced significantly from at least one party of the trade war, the USA or China, between 2018 and 2020.

Our study developed a typology of fencing vs. balancing for explaining third-party SME exporters’ response strategies in terms of export market and international sourcing locations during a trade war. Fencing strategy centres on location choice decisions based on a fence or a secure buffer zone. Balancing strategy focuses on leveraging opportunities outside the conflict zone, i.e. third-party countries. Our study finds that exporters’ location choice decisions are influenced by a number of institutional factors during the trade war.

Firstly, our study examined only the early phase of the trade war under the “Trump” era. Future research may consider a longitudinal study design that examines exporters’ responses to global political uncertainty over a longer term. Secondly, we chose Australia and New Zealand as the focal context of this study. Future research could investigate exporters from other third-party countries that have different institutional conditions during the US-China trade war.

Firstly, an exporting firm should monitor and assess closely the wider changes in international relations between their home country’s major security partner and major trading partner, and the impact of these changes on the political risks of operating in international locations. Secondly, as the trade war intensifies, the fencing option needs to be given a greater weight than the balancing option in the strategic decision making of an exporter from a third-party country. Lastly, we encourage marketers and managers to reflect on and differentiate short-term and long-term benefits in strategic market-sourcing location decisions.

Our study makes a pioneering effort to theorise the linkages between institutional factors and the combined evaluation of export market selection and sourcing location selection choices under global political uncertainty based on the institution-based view. We present a conceptual framework highlighting the importance of institutional avoidance, embeddedness, comparative institutional advantages and multiple institutional logics for SME exporters’ international location selections during the trade war. Furthermore, we combine these institutional factors into two overarching constructs namely institutional buffer and institutional pluralism.

This study intends to investigate drivers and consequences of supply chain coordination (SCC) towards green to highlight some convincing evidence for an emerging country's exporters to promote sustainable coffee development.

Data were gathered from surveying 189 managers of coffee exporters in Vietnam and then applied PLS-SEM for analysis.

This study demonstrates that top management sensitivity, along with institutional forces of regulation, market and competition, strongly stimulate exporters' supply chain coordination towards green. Additionally, that coordination boosts the export financial and market performance.

The findings may not be generalizable because the current study only included data from Vietnamese coffee exporters.

This study contributes to the current literature by looking from the perspective of coffee exporters – leading players in supply chains for export. The research findings represent the first solid argument for Vietnam coffee exporters to encourage SCC towards green and reveal several implications for managers and policymakers to support sustainable development in an emerging country.

This study aims to gain a deep understanding of the process of international commercial terms (Incoterms) selection by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Bangladesh and identify the key factors that influence their choices. The study also intends to explore the discrepancy between the literature and the actual industry practice so that policymakers and traders can make more informed decisions in this respect.

The study adopts a mixed methodology. Initially, 20 factors under five principle components were identified by reviewing the literature. The semi-structured one-to-one interview method has been used to gather expert opinions on the factors and to identify the discrepancy between literature and actual industry practices. Finally, eight factors have been identified and surveyed using the best-worst method (BWM) to determine their relative significance or weights in Incoterm selection.

The study has found that government policies, the influence of banks and currency fluctuations are the top three influential factors in selecting Incoterms by SMEs in Bangladesh. As a result, the most commonly used Incoterms are free on board (FOB) for the exporters and cost and freight (CFR) for the importers. However, discrepancies have been identified between the selected and the actual application of the Incoterms.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to identify and analyse the factors that influence the selection of Incoterms by the SMEs in the context of a developing nation. The study has identified the factors from both importers’ and exporters’ perspectives that have not been done by any previous studies. Moreover, this study explores the discrepancies between the agreed Incoterm and the actual industry practices which is a unique contribution to the literature.

This study aims to assess Ethiopia’s export performance and emerging exporters of textile and apparel products.

Descriptive research designs were used to investigate textiles and apparel export performance. Quantitative secondary data were collected from the International Trade Center database for 19 years (2004–2022). Data analysis was performed using percentage, Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) and Independent t-test using Excel and SPSS version 20.

Findings show that Ethiopia and emerging exporters of textiles and apparel have fluctuating export performance both in absolute value and percentage of growth. The RCA results revealed that Ethiopia, South Africa, Japan, Russia, Australia and Ghana had comparative disadvantages at first, and then Ethiopia’s index showed improvement to weak and medium levels. Meanwhile, countries such as Madagascar and Cambodia have a stronger comparative advantage than Ethiopia and other countries considered in this study. In addition, the findings also show significant differences between Ethiopia and other emerging exporters of textile apparel, except Egypt.

The findings of this study have significant ramifications for scholars, professionals in the textile sector and decision-makers in legislation.

This study established new trends and extended the application of the RCA index across regions.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented challenges to businesses worldwide, compelling them to swiftly adapt their strategies to the evolving landscape. This study explores the relationships between uncertainty shocks (i.e. COVID-19), strategic responses, and performance outcomes, with a specific focus on general and green strategic responses.

Drawing from a sample of sustainability-oriented exporters in different industries, we examine the impact of these responses on market, financial, and operation performance by gathering data from 212 managers in Vietnam – an emerging country, and then applying PLS-SEM for analysis.

Our findings reveal that sustainability-oriented exporters have exhibited adaptability by adopting general and green strategic responses in the face of the pandemic’s disruptions. Green strategic responses positively influence market, financial, and operational performance, underscoring the strategic significance of integrating sustainability considerations. However, while general strategic responses show alignment with uncertainty risks, they just impact operational performance, but do not significantly influence market and financial outcomes.

Future research should consider diversifying the sample to encompass a wider range of firm types and geographical locations to enhance the external validity of the results. In addition, the study does not extensively explore the mechanisms that mediate or moderate the relationships between uncertainty shocks, strategic responses, and performance outcomes.

The study’s implications guide practitioners toward agile responses that balance adaptability, sustainability, and performance. This study provides timely insights for sustainability-oriented firms, managers, policymakers, and researchers aiming to navigate disruptions effectively and sustainably.

These findings contribute to the fields of strategic management and sustainability by emphasizing the complexities of strategic responses during uncertainty shocks, and disruptions and the pivotal role of sustainability-driven strategies in enhancing performance.

This study aims to provide a detailed characterization of Argentinean exporting wineries using a new rich firm-level data set to understand how capabilities and business strategies differ among firms with different levels of involvement in the export market.

A survey was distributed among all wineries along all wine regions of Argentina; the 45-min questionnaire was answered by 230 wineries, a representative sample with a response rate of 26.3% of the total population of Argentinean wineries. The survey assessed the interaction between wineries’ dynamics and characteristics and their participation in export markets. In the comparative analysis, the results are presented by dividing the sample into four categories according to the export intensity of the wineries.

High-intensity exporting wineries in Argentina differ from other Argentinean wineries in several dimensions. In particular, the most internationalized Argentinean wineries are the most endowed with higher capabilities; they follow a specific business model emphasizing product differentiation, quality upgrading, brand building and the development of distribution channels. Exporting wineries from Argentina adopt business practices that differ from those that prevail among wineries that only target the domestic market. They have developed firm capabilities such as human capital and technology to play a critical role in quality upgrading for their participation in global wine markets.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to study the Argentinean exporting wineries using a firm-level sizeable representative sample.

This paper aims to explain the unwillingness to exchange export knowledge by members of exporters’ networks and provides potential solutions to this problem.

This study uses data from a survey of 301 members of a French exporter’s network to test a set of hypotheses with partial least squares structural equation modeling.

Network participants’ export experience and age have a negative influence on their willingness to exchange knowledge. However, positive attitudes toward the network (perception of network quality, commitment) can mitigate those negative links.

Network members’ unwillingness to exchange knowledge represents a major challenge that threatens the existence of knowledge networks. The findings suggest solutions to this issue for network managers.

This study views knowledge exchange in a network as a risky behavior. It explains why members do not participate in networks. The model shows how contrary forces work and interact to deter or foster knowledge exchange.

The purpose of this study is to explore the means by which exporters foster innovation via the learning-by-exporting effect and to appraise the moderating role of employee human capital in the export–innovation relationship.

Leveraging the linked-survey-secondary data from the Human Capital Corporate Panel (HCCP) spanning 2011–2017, with 890 observations from 228 Korean exporters, this study utilizes Generalized Least Squares (GLS) regression to empirically test the proposed hypotheses.

The results indicate that exporting significantly boosts a firm’s innovation performance by encouraging the generation of new concepts in products, services, technologies and/or production lines. Moreover, the presence of international talent and highly educated staff positively moderates the relationship between export intensity and innovation performance.

By integrating organizational learning and human capital theories, this study yields theoretical and managerial insights by elucidating the roles of exporting and human capital in advancing innovation performance, thereby guiding corporate export strategies and human resource policies.

Export market orientation can be broadly divided into intelligence (generation and dissemination) and responsiveness activities. Although previous studies assess intelligence and responsiveness activities, little is known about what type of international channel partner acts as an enabling condition for the impact of these activities on export venture performance. This study aims to examine the extent to which the selection of international channel partners through word-of-mouth referrals versus direct contacts affects the benefits of intelligence and responsiveness activities.

Data were collected from 246 exporting manufacturers in Japan. To test the hypotheses, we conducted regression analyses using a subjective performance measure at the venture level. We also performed a post hoc analysis using objective performance measure at the function level.

We find that the extent to which international channel partners are selected through word-of-mouth referrals has a moderating role in the export market-oriented activities–performance linkages. Specifically, it acts as an enabling condition for intelligence activity and a disenabling condition for responsiveness activity.

This study contributes to a better understanding of export market orientation by classifying it into intelligence and responsiveness activities and providing empirical evidence on their different interaction effects with partner selection. It also contributes to the elaboration of agency theory by offering insights into the fit between task characteristics and contract type. Our study is critical for business managers as it suggests guidelines for manufacturing exporters engaging in export market-oriented behaviors and export channel management.

While coopetition (cooperation among competitors) has been widely researched in domestic settings, relatively less work has evaluated how small exporters engage in these business-to-business (B2B) marketing strategies. Therefore, export coopetition activities could have different performance outcomes (and boundary conditions) to these B2B marketing practices in domestic arenas. Consequently, underpinned by resource-based theory (and focusing on smaller-sized and internationalised, businesses), the purpose of this paper is to unpack the relationship between export coopetition activities and export sales performance by accounting for key quadratic and moderating effects.

Survey responses were obtained from 107 small, and export-oriented, wine producers in South Africa. After refining the measurement scales, the quantitative data passed all major assessments of reliability, validity and common method variance. Subsequently, the elements of the conceptual model were tested through a hierarchical regression analysis. Moreover, a post-hoc test was undertaken to delve deeper into the nuances of the statistical results – and offer additional insights concerning how these B2B marketing strategies operate (and manifest) in export markets.

A significant non-linear (inverted U-shaped) relationship was found between export coopetition activities and export sales performance. No support was found for the moderators, namely, export geographical scope, export intensity or the interaction between these forms of internationalisation. An interesting issue to emerge from the post-hoc test was that export geographical scope yielded a quadratic link with export sales performance, for which the export coopetition activities construct did not moderate this connection (a non-significant interaction effect). These findings offer new insights that help inform the concentration versus spreading debate related to target market strategies.

New evidence emerges on the internationalisation of the coopetition construct, regarding how smaller-sized companies collaborate with their competitors within their export markets. Likewise, stronger insights arise concerning the dark sides of export coopetition activities via circumstances where they are harmful to internationalised firms. Moreover, improved claims are made about how resource-based theory serves as a useful tool to conceptualise the nuances of export coopetition activities and how they impact export sales performance. Collectively, this investigation not only responds to calls for research to evaluate coopetition in export markets but also embraces the complexities of these B2B marketing strategies.