The need for facing up the competitors and the wish to build the competitive advantage on the market contribute to enterprises’ expansion on foreign markets. Motives lying behind the enterprise management decision when starting expansion abroad vary and they depend on an individual market situation of the enterprise. They can also evolve in time. The decision about enterprise expansion may be dictated by the will to make advantage of chances which appear on the market. Nevertheless, it also happens that adverse conditions of the enterprise external environment force its internationalization. Motives of foreign expansion can be classified in many ways. This article describes four main groups of motives: market, costs-related, supplies and strategic ones. The second part of this paper analyses changes in enterprises’ motives of expansion during the global financial and economic crisis
