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The activities of service and product firms are compared in terms of their market‐oriented behavior in their export operations (i.e. their export market‐oriented (EMO) behavior). Empirical analysis conducted on a sample of 783 Finnish exporters containing both service and product firms uncovered several interesting differences: service and product firms differed in their level of EMO behavior; the direct effects from EMO behavior to various dimensions of export success were invariant across the samples; however, the export environment moderated the link between EMO behavior and export profit performance in different ways across the samples. The results indicate that EMO behavior may be more appropriate under certain environmental conditions, and less appropriate under others. However, the nature of the relationship between EMO behavior and export success may also depend on whether the firm’s core export market offerings are services or physical products.

The purpose of this study is to highlight key themes and issues within the strategic orientation research domain that are in need of research attention by international scholars.

The approach taken is an essay format.

The essay identifies six prime issues in need of attention by scholars interested in examining strategic orientations in the context of international business success. These are the need to: examine the relative merits of adopting strategic orientations in firms’ domestic and international business operations; more carefully match international performance metrics to the theory being developed; develop more theory‐rich conceptual models of the consequences of strategic orientations by considering non‐linear and complex moderated relationships; consider the dimensionality of strategic orientations more closely, potentially viewing the constructs in a variety of disaggregated ways, so as to develop models with greater conceptual precision and managerial relevance; go beyond current methodological boundaries to provide better/more robust tests of theories; and integrate theories regarding individual strategic orientations into meta‐theories that accommodate multiple strategic orientations.

For each of the six prime research issues identified as being important within the international strategic orientations field, a variety of specific research avenues and research questions are raised and discussed.

The paper provides researchers with insights into potential avenues for conducting research into strategic orientations in the international marketing arena.