The influence of shop characteristics on workload control

Abstract

The magic word of the last years is internationalization. Researchers more and more focus on export market information and the relationship between this information and export performance. Just a few studies take into account the impact of firm characteristics on these topics. This study shows that country-of-origin, sector and size class (both individually and simultaneously) influence both the number of information sources consulted, and the type of information provider consulted. Besides, the relationship between the amount of export market information and export sales is not straightforward, but needs to be corrected for these three firm characteristics. These conclusions have implications for governmental export promotion campaigns, for the information behaviour of SME-managers, and for the strategies of information providers.