Factors influencing successful export performance an empirical investigation on Malaysian exporting manufacturing firms / Gluma Saban... [et al.]

The most common question that has attracted much attention among scholars and practitioners is why some firms perform better while others do not. To probe further, this study focused on the key determinants of successful exporting firm performance. In spite of numerous literature on this subject, a need remains for investigating the performance of Malaysian exporting manufacturing firms. This study examines two major influences of export success: the organizational resource profile and marketing resource profile of the firm. This research explores the relationships among the firms' resources, the firms' external factors and export performance. It is guided by a model framework based on the resource-based view. The findings of this study are based on the responses obtained from a cross-sectional survey of one hundred and fifty five (155) exporting manufacturing firms throughout Malaysia. In general, the results indicate that influence of some categories of resources enables the firms to obtain superior levels of performance. Specifically, the key results of this study suggest that firm size; export experience; export marketing resources and communication management competency; export market and industry competency; export pricing of new product competency; and export information usage efficiency are the major factors that can determine the firms to achieve superior performance. Several recommendations are also presented to enable future researchers and policy makers to have greater insight in their endeavor to develop more effective policies and programmes to enhance competitiveness and greater success for Malaysian exporters.