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Given the fact that emerging economies have idiosyncratic characteristics, international marketing strategies of emerging-market exporting firms have been firmly acknowledged to be rather peculiar compared to exporting firms based in developed countries. In this sense, it is therefore incumbent to synthesize the stream of research on international marketing strategy with a particular focus on emerging-market exporting firms. Accordingly, the main purpose of this study is to critically assess the related empirical body of research, and to build a conceptual framework for further development by drawing on the knowledge gaps identified.

To serve the research objective, this study adopts a systematic literature review methodology. In this sense, 51 articles were content-analyzed as to theoretical underpinnings, scope of research, research methodology, and empirical issues; and a comprehensive conceptual framework and research propositions were developed.

The findings of this review delineate that the pertinent literature is characterized by some contextual, methodological, and empirical weaknesses. In a nutshell, although the last decades have witnessed a burgeoning interest; the pertinent literature is still at the introductory stage and needs additional improvement.

By addressing the research gap concerning the requirement to synthesize and compile the empirical line of research on international marketing strategy of emerging-market exporting firms, this review study provides novel and valuable insights into the existing knowledge on the subject.

This paper argues that performance should be investigated as an independent variable. Using survey data of over 400 managers responsible for the main export ventures of Portuguese SMEs (small and medium exporters), this paper shows that past performance plays a crucial role in building SMEs' commitment to exporting and to the determination of their current marketing strategy. Findings also show that marketing strategy adaptation to the foreign market is particularly noted in firms exporting to the most developed markets, rather than in firms exporting to the most competitive environments. Future international marketing research is encouraged to focus on understanding both the direct and indirect relationships among past performance, firm's commitment to exporting, and current marketing strategy under the influence of external forces. Such a focus has the potential to enrich the theory and generate relevant managerial and public policy implications.

The relationships between organisational characteristics, export marketing strategy, and export performance are examined. Based on a nationwide survey of United States exporting firms, it is shown that exporters who are committed to exporting and are formally trained in international business tend to sell directly to final end‐users, utilise their own export department, and charge higher prices for products exported than for sales in the domestic market. In turn, such exporters tend to perform better financially.

This study aims to examine the effects of international competitive strategies, i.e. cost leadership and differentiation, on export (market share and strategic) performance. This study further explores the roles of exploitative and exploratory organizational learning in the relationships between international competitive strategies and export performances. To fill research gaps, this study intends to provide guidance on how varied exploitative/exploratory organizational learning and cost leadership/differentiation strategy combinations would affect export performance. The outcomes of this study provide a new match and mis-match conceptualization to extant international competitive strategy and organizational learning literature.

This study selected New Zealand (NZ) exporting as the research setting because exporting plays such a vital role in NZ’s economy and NZ exporting firms have long been highly competitive in international markets (e.g. meat and dairy exporters), with the primary data collected through surveys conducted in 2010 and 2013. This study adopted a three-year lagged performance approach.

Cost leadership strategy has a positive effect on market share performance. This effect is enhanced by exploitative learning but dampened by exploratory learning. Cost leadership also has a positive effect on strategic performance, which is not affected by exploitative and exploratory learning. Differentiation strategy bears no relation to market share and strategic performance, even allowing for exploitative and exploratory learning. Collectively, the contingent role of organizational learning in the international competitive strategies and export performance framework is far more comprehensive than was expected.

This study reveals that a match between cost leadership strategy and exploitative learning may result in a superior market share. The configuration of differentiation strategy and exploitative learning and the integration of cost leadership strategy and exploratory learning are suggested as mis-matches, as these combinations would not lead to any significant and positive market share and strategic performance. Unexpectedly, the co-alliance of differentiation strategy and explorative learning is not suggested as a match, as it does not result in a superior market share and strategic performance. This latter outcome suggests that the differentiation strategy-export performance link may be stimulated by other moderating factors (e.g. business managerial ties).

While choosing an appropriate international competitive strategy, managers may use cost leadership over differentiation strategy to achieve successful export performance in both the market share and strategic perspectives. Export managers focusing on cost leadership strategy may further implement exploitative learning instead of explorative learning, when market share is vital. Meanwhile, they may note that explorative learning may not have a moderating effect on enhancing strategic performance through cost leadership. These points signify that exploitation of existing knowledge may be more effective than exploration of new knowledge for market share expansion when cost leadership strategy is devoted to exporting activities. Differentiation strategy, however, does not influence market share and strategic performance in exporting, even with an alignment of exploitative/exploratory learning. Managers are urged to pay attention to the mis-match of differentiation strategy and organizational learning when market share and strategic performance are the priorities in export performance evaluation.

This study contributes to the organizational learning literature by providing a new match and mis-match conceptualization relating to international competitive strategy and export performance. The new framework provides directions on when firms should use organizational learning to enhance their competitive strategies (a match scenario) and when they should not use it (a mis-match scenario). This study broadens the existing research that has mainly focused on alignment combinations such as organizational learning-internationalization strategy and organizational learning-social network.

Past research suggests that a financial crisis event has a dual and ambiguous effect on the exporting strategy of subsidiaries of multinational firms in a value chain and offshoring perspective. From a total volume perspective exports are expected to contract due to a decline in demand (demand shock) from other subsidiaries downstream in the value chain. While in a comparative perspective multinational subsidiaries are found to perform relatively better than local firms that are integrated differently (arms’ length) in global production networks (e.g., offshoring outsourcing). This chapter tries to reconcile these findings by testing a number of hypothesis about global integration strategies in the context of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and how it affected exporting among multinational subsidiaries operating out of Turkey. Controlling for the impact that exchange rate depreciations and volatility has on firm-level exports the study shows that the particular global event studied had no additional impact on individual firms’ exports. Since multinational subsidiaries are more insulated from these effects they are able to expand rather than contract their global integration strategies throughout the course of the GFC.

This study aims to present two new contingent frameworks that hypothesize the moderation role of managerial ties (MTs) in the international competitive strategy-export financial and strategic performance framework. The purposes of this study are to explore whether a common standardized or individual customized conceptualization consisting of MTs, international competitive strategy and performance can be used to achieve export financial and strategic performance; to offer contingent factors for the current international competitive strategy-export performance framework; and to generalize the roles of MTs in the developed vis-à-vis developing region.

This study uses the experience of 114 exporting firms operating in the European Union region to test its theoretical frameworks. MTs include both business and political ties.

Business and political ties have completely different moderation effects on the relation between international differentiation/low-cost strategy and export financial/strategic performance. Business ties have a positive influence on the international differentiation strategy-export strategic performance and international low-cost strategy-export financial performance dyads, but a negative effect in the international low-cost strategy-export strategic performance framework. In contrast, political ties are revealed to have a negative effect on the international differentiation/low-cost strategy-export financial performance framework.

This research advances extant international competitive strategy-export performance literature by revealing the bright and dark sides of business ties and the down side of political ties in the framework. Performance should be investigated in terms of financial and strategic performance. The moderation effect of business ties is more complex than that reported in the developing region; thus, a cross-regional generalization on these ties’ effects is more difficult to establish. In contrast, the dark side effect of political ties is consistent across developed and developing regions; a cross-regional generalization on these ties is more viable. Collectively, the results show that a standardized process for achieving both export financial and export strategic performances is not feasible, while a customized process for each export performance is needed.

Exporting is a popular foreign market entry mode, especially among small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The success of SME exporters depends on their ability to establish and maintain profitable long-term relationships with foreign customers. This study aims to propose that the development of an effective export sales strategy can contribute greatly toward this aim. The study also demonstrates that export market intelligence generation and export market intelligence dissemination activities are important drivers of export sales strategy. Export sales strategy comprises three dimensions, which are expected to have a positive influence on export performance.

The study uses survey data obtained from 168 exporting firms based in Greece, to test a set of research hypotheses. Structural equation modeling procedures are used.

Findings indicate that export market intelligence generation and dissemination activities support and facilitate the development of effective export sales strategies, tailored to serve individual foreign accounts. Furthermore, all strategic dimensions of export sales strategy demonstrate significant positive effects on export performance.

The research underlines the importance of incorporating export sales strategy in studies that aim to investigate the drivers of export performance.

The findings also indicate that exporting firms must actively engage in market intelligence activities to reinforce their strategic decision-making process.

The study emphasizes the crucial importance of export sales strategy in achieving superior export performance. The study provides a theory-driven conceptualization and operationalization of export sales strategy and offers an empirical assessment of a comprehensive model that includes the key antecedents and performance outcomes of export sales strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the joint effect of persistency in innovation and export on firms’ total factor productivity. In particular, the aim is to determine if exporting in international markets along subsequent periods, and being also continuously innovating over the same periods, can be associated with increases in firms’ productivity. The underlying idea is that time recurrence of these strategies is related to the firms’ ability to optimize external knowledge flows enhancing their productivity.

By using data on Italian manufacturing firms over the period 1998–2006, the authors distinguish between repeated and temporary exporting firms, as well as repeated and temporary innovators, to test (through two-step system generalized methods of moments) the existence of any combined learning-by-exporting and learning-by-doing effects.

This paper provides empirical findings about persistent innovation efforts being better associated with a permanent presence in foreign markets. More in detail, persistently innovative and exporting firms have better productivity results than persistently exporting (innovating) firms with non-persistent innovation (export). Combining both strategies could be an opportunity to internalize knowledge flows coming from long-lasting exposure to foreign markets. These results hold especially for small firms.

The novelty of this paper is twofold. First, the authors argue that the temporal dimension of firms’ exporting and innovating activities may influence firms’ productivity. Second, while previous studies explored the role of export and innovation on productivity in isolation, the authors consider the joint effect of this relationship and also explore it across the temporal dimension finding evidence that they have a positive, reinforced effects if firms implement these activities continuously and jointly. In this case, the effect of innovation and export on productivity is significantly higher than if firms with intermittent strategies do not have the time to internalize knowledge flows coming from participating in export market.

This article illustrates how, during the COVID-19 pandemic, emerging market exporting firms can adopt differentiation strategies using composition-based capabilities, which, in turn, will enable them to strengthen their images and market shares, i.e. their strategic marketing performance in advanced markets.

This study is based on survey data obtained from 86 Pakistani firms exporting to advanced economies.

The study found that compositional collaboration capabilities positively influence the differentiation strategies and strategic marketing performance of emerging market exporting firms conducting business in advanced host markets. Furthermore, the findings indicate that differentiation strategies mediate the influence of compositional collaboration capabilities on the strategic marketing performance of these firms.

By taking a new compositional based theoretical perspective, this study examined the underexplored phenomenon of how emerging market firms can differentiate their offerings in advanced export markets in order to achieve a better strategic performance during external shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Given that export growth is a strategic priority for many emerging markets, including Pakistan, due to their substantial trade deficits, this study provides important contributions from both the theoretical and practical perspectives.

This study develops a model that explains export sales volume by destination based on a company's export marketing strategy. A seemingly unrelated regression model (SURE) simultaneously estimates the explanatory value of the different elements of the marketing strategy, as well as company characteristics, such as experience, size and motivation to export, on entry decisions to six different regional markets made by exporting companies in a southern European country. The data were collected from a sample size of 2,264 exporting companies. Findings confirm the importance of exporting experience and proactiveness in determining high export sales volumes in every regional market except for those psychologically close. Nevertheless, different marketing strategies depending on the region lead to high export sales volumes. For example, low price strategies in the case of Latin America or differentiation strategies based on the augmented product in the case of the USA generate high export sales. Promotional expenditures are of higher importance for distant markets, but for closer markets channel development is the key.