Search results

Purpose – To identify and systematically analyze empirical works in the emerging field of global online entrepreneurship.

Design/methodology/approach – A review of empirical articles published in peer-reviewed academic journals (1997–2008) focused on global online activities of entrepreneurial firms. The methodology purposefully compares a large number of recent studies on the main objective, type of research, theoretical framework, methodology, and main findings.

Findings – The systematic analysis of 45 articles reveals the most relevant publications in the field highlighting the collective contribution of this body of literature. The review offers insight into the state of the art of the field, discusses the implications for future development, and provides insights into the entrepreneurial aspects of e-commerce use.

Research limitations/implications – The review is limited to empirical articles published in academic journals and does not cover important conceptual contributions, book chapters, or conference publications.

Practical implications – The review highlights avenues for the future development of the field and provides guidelines for practitioners involved in global online business.

Originality/value – This paper provides a consolidation of an emerging field and offers practical advice to firms involved in global e-commerce.

Previous studies have shown that lack of information can provide an obstacle to firms’ endeavour to be competitive in oversea markets. This study provides empirical data that examine how managers of internationalising UK high‐technology firms perceive the usefulness of overseas market information, their levels of utilisation, plus perceptions of the types of data required. Findings are based on a postal survey of winners of the Queen’s Award for Technological Achievement; also reported are selected findings from a series of in‐depth interviews. This paper sets out to establish whether statistical differences exist between two sub‐samples identified by their overseas market expansion strategies: those that concentrate on key markets as opposed to those that spread sales over a number of markets. Results from follow‐up interviews provide in‐depth data to support the quantitative findings.

Examines the market research activities of UK industrial exporters. First reviews the literature concerned with information for international marketing in general and export marketing research in particular. Describes the method of a research study, comparing the market research activities of exporters in the light of company size and export experience. Analyses the results, finding that companies, once embarked on export activity rely on personal contact with distributors, agents, customers and competitors to gather information concerning the markets they serve, and this information is used equivocally to modify decisions. Finally, discusses the implications for future research and management.

Two hypotheses concerning two variables that potentially influence the “add/drop” foreign market decisions of U.S. exporters of sewing machines are developed and empirically tested. The variables are import market potential, and a surrogate measure of import market competitiveness. A third variable, concerning a developing country’s “trade regime” – Import Substituting, Export Promoting (Bhagwati, 1978) – is employed as a control variable in the tests. The two hypotheses are confirmed, and the results shed light on how U.S. exporters of sewing machines should analyze data on the three variables en route to adjusting their respective portfolios of export markets in a context of making add/drop foreign market decisions. The results of the research potentially contribute to three different literatures: the international marketing literature, the competitiveness literature and the “trade regime” literature in international economics.

This volume of Progress in International Business Research comprises of a selection of 12 competitive papers from the 34th EIBA (European International Business Academy) annual conference, which was held in Tallinn, Estonia in December 2008 with the theme “International Business and the Catching-up Economies: Challenges and Opportunities”. It addresses two main issues – (1) the internationalization process and (2) the role of knowledge and innovation for internationalization – that are important in the current economic slowdown both for catching-up and for other economies, scholars, and practitioners.

Given the ways in which the research pressures on university staff are becoming seemingly ever greater, an issue of the European Journal of Marketing that is given over to a survey of the kinds of research initiatives which are currently being carried out is timely. The study which provides the basis for this was conducted between December 1994 and February 1995, with questionnaires being sent to staff in universities throughout Europe. At the time the final selection was made, a total of 150 responses had been received from 18 countries.

The purpose of this paper is to review recent published research on entrepreneurship education (EE) specifically within the special issue collections of the journal Education +Training, and to assess the overall contribution to the field. The research questions focus on: What topics are explored by these SI papers? What trends can be observed in relation to country context and methodological approach? How is EE defined in these papers, and how do the papers contribute to the wider entrepreneurship research agenda?

The paper uses an adapted version of the systematic literature review approach, focusing on the discrete special issues on entrepreneurship/enterprise education published in the journal Education + Training since 2010. A comprehensive reading guide was used to review the papers, with completed data compiled into a single excel spreadsheet to facilitate analysis. A total of 66 papers were reviewed.

A considerable range of themes, geographical contexts and methodological approaches were used in the papers reviewed. A mix of qualitative and quantitative approaches were also found. The papers were characterised by a strong international and applied dimension, with the core collective contribution of the SI papers laying in their direct relevance to practice.

The paper is limited by its deliberate focus on a discrete set of special issue papers; however, the total of 66 papers included in the review is noteworthy.

The paper demonstrates the considerable learning that can be garnered from the Education + Training special issue collection for EE practitioners.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first time this discrete collection of special issue papers has been reviewed.