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To test empirical relationships between export market information use and export knowledge and export performance.

Confirmatory factor analysis, using LISREL 8.50, based on a postal survey. The setting selected was the Norwegian seafood industry, mainly consisting of a number of small and medium‐sized firms with a strong export dependency.

The results indicate that “instrumental/conceptual” use of information positively affects both export knowledge and export performance, while “symbolic” use does not affect either. Export knowledge is found to have no direct influence on export performance in this study.

For generalisation purposes, longitudinal studies in multiple settings would be preferable to this cross‐sectional survey in a specific setting.

Firms accumulate knowledge and expertise by integrating and incorporating information that has been processed, interpreted and used. This study underscores the importance, for success in export markets, of a commitment to systematically generating, disseminating and responding to export market information. There are clear implications for the management of market intelligence and planning, to enhance the firm's performance.

Provides a better understanding of export market information use and its consequences, by integrating it with the concepts of export knowledge and export performance, and testing their structural relations.

The purpose of this paper is to present a concise status of niche marketing research and thereby provide a basis for further scholarly enhancement and insights for practitioners.

This paper takes the form of a literature review.

Reasons for why and when to pursue niche marketing, key success factors for implementing niche marketing and the potential problem areas are identified. Avenues for advancing knowledge about niche marketing are discussed.

Practitioners benefit from this comprehensive review of findings and insights from previous research. Scholars benefit from this review, as it summarizes and identifies key areas for future niche marketing research.

There has be no known scholarly article assessing the status of niche marketing research since Dalgic and Leeuw's seminal work.

The purpose of this paper is to better understand how strategic orientation guides the marketing strategy and marketing efforts of niche firms, by addressing the questions of which strategic orientation niche firms apply and how managers in niche firms handle the potential problems associated with different strategic orientations. Based on these findings, managerial implications are discussed.

Qualitative research in terms of in‐depth interviews of key informants in six niche firms in the seafood and wine industries.

The niche firms appear to be product oriented and customer oriented at the same time. They overcome the potential problems related to the respective strategic orientations by focusing on their product‐related strengths, while benefiting from their close and few customer relationships.

Managers in niche firms should focus on high‐quality products, specific product concepts and the continuous improvement of these. In addition, they should initiate and develop close and long‐term relationships with a few trusted business customers.

This research paper is one among very few papers that present findings related to niche firms and their choice of marketing strategy. This paper of strategic orientation can contribute to a better understanding of how niche firms prioritize, allocate resources and choose strategies.

The limited academic literature available on niche marketing has mainly focused on market‐specific factors, and the discussion has in particular centred on the characteristics of what a niche is and what causes it to exist. In an attempt to fill this gap in the literature, the purpose of this paper is to identify the strategic capabilities of niche firms.

In this paper, aspects regarding niche marketing and strategic capability are identified and briefly discussed with reference to the existing literature. Next, the methodology for the research at hand is presented, followed by a discussion of its findings. The paper then continues with the conclusion of this research, followed by pinpointing some of its limitations and providing recommendations for future research.

All the investigated case firms follow a focused differentiation strategy to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. The focus aspect of the niche firms' strategy is mirrored in the reported narrow geographic market focus, which could be limited to only one country, a limited number of customers – one sole customer in one case – or a limited number of customer types. With regard to strategic capabilities, the results were rather similar across cases, particularly for each pair of case firms within similar sectors (wine, organic salmon, and stockfish). From the case firms' point of view, it is clear that having access to high‐quality raw material is critical to their strategy of delivering high‐quality products. Finally, many of the identified resources and competences appear rather static, or fixed over several years.

The strategic capabilities as identified in this paper can be described and placed at different stages within the firms' value chains. Each stage has its own set of important strategic capabilities. These stages are: inbound logistics, production or refinement, and marketing and sales.

To explore the perceived attributes of export information quality provided by export assistance sources, in order to provide some guidelines for how these information suppliers can improve the quality of their offered information.

Twelve in‐depth personal interviews of export managers were used as the data collection method. The setting selected for this research is the Norwegian seafood industry, which mainly consists of a number of small and medium‐sized firms with a strong export dependency, and thus well positioned to address export‐specific issues.

Four service aspects are important: reliability (delivery within agreed deadline), responsiveness (rapid feedback and good communication flow), assurance (credibility and honesty) and empathy (able and willing to serve individual needs). Six aspects related to outcome are important: form and comparability (concrete, specific, precise, comparable and up‐to‐date), infrastructure (distribution, logistics and storage), general marketing (economics, trends and culture), specific marketing (detailed information regarding, e.g. price fluctuations, consumer preferences, distributor assessments, credit valuation), production/supply (volumes, quotas and availability) and regulatory framework (customs, market access and regulations).

These findings are not fit for generalizing purposes and future research could test these results in a quantitative study. Further, the effect of other variables such as firm size and export experience could be examined and linked with different dimensions of export market information use.

Suggestions for providers of export information on how to improve the process of supplying information to exporters and the type of information needed by exporters and how exporters can influence this process and results are provided.

This paper identifies attributes of export information quality as perceived by exporters and thus enables subsequent information quality measurements and information quality improvements.

This paper aims to explore how internationally oriented niche firms define and choose their markets and customers and how they position their products, and thereby add to the limited research knowledge regarding niche marketing.

The paper presents exploratory research based on structured in‐depth interviews of key informants in five firms.

Niche firms do not seem to follow the STP‐process. The selection of customers and markets is the result of tradition, chance or the firm's production philosophy, and the firms make few attempts to position their products. The firms rely on resource‐based advantages, high‐quality products and personal relationships when competing in the market.

The selected methodology makes these results alone unfit for generalising to a larger population. Improved theoretical models are needed for generating more knowledge about niche firms and their efforts in crafting marketing strategies, possibly by extending relationship marketing theory.

A niche firm's marketing strategy should be based on a customer‐valued competitive advantage and differentiation should be applied in terms of both intangible and actual use criteria. Niche firms should strive for long‐term, personal relationships and customer commitment. Also, there seems to be some room for following one's own personal convictions and ideas when crafting a marketing strategy, even though this approach certainly is not in line with the structured marketing strategy process suggested in textbooks.

This study offers exploratory findings on how export‐oriented niche firms define and choose their markets and customers, and how they position their products. The standard STP‐process as proposed in general textbooks is not appropriate for international niche firms.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and explore important value‐creation initiatives in buyer‐seller relationships (BSRs).

Following a literature review and the presentation of an appropriate conceptual framework, an exploratory study of 14 BSRs in a variety of European industries is undertaken using in‐depth semi‐structured interviews with key informants.

The findings justify a distinction being drawn between two types of value‐creation initiatives: those that are important in transaction‐based arrangements (in which efficiency is paramount); and those that are important in interaction‐based relationships (in which effectiveness is paramount). Of the ten value‐creation initiatives identified in the literature review, seven were found to be of importance in the BSRs of the present sample.

Despite genuine attempts to select a heterogeneous sample, most of the data did come from sellers. Future studies could look more deeply into buyer data to explore these issues in BSRs.

The paper provides managers with practical guidance on the selection of appropriate value‐creation initiatives in various types of BSRs.

The paper reports the first known empirical study of value‐creation initiatives in BSRs.

Building on prior research in organizational knowledge, learning, and memory, this paper suggests that export market knowledge may provide a deeper understanding of the relationships between export market information use and export performance. Specifically, a conceptual model is developed linking different dimensions of information use to different dimensions of organizational knowledge as well as to export performance. This is then used to generate research propositions that provide insights into how export market knowledge integrates with export market information use and affects export performance.