Export Marketing Strategies. Journal of Euromarketing

Why are some firms more successful than others in their exporting activities? Katsikeas et al.(2000) identified two main groups of explanatory variables of export performance:background variables (managerial, organizational, and environmental) and interveningvariables. Intervening variables are those that have a direct influence on export performance,such as the company's targeting and marketing strategy. In this paper, we argue that highperforming exporting depends on the appropriate leveraging of a company's competitiveadvantages in foreign markets (Naidu and Rao, 1993; Samiee and Walters, 1991) and that, inmany cases, an important reason behind low performing exporting is lack of either a clearlyspecified advantage or of knowledge of how to exploit it in the international marketplace (Johansson, 1999).