Exporting constitutes an attractive foreign market entry and expansion approach for firms, especially those of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). During the past four decades, the field of exporting has paid particular attention to product market strategies (e.g. cost leadership strategy and differentiation strategy) that drive export performance. However, as SMEs begin to compete in export markets in the value-added manufacturing, their export success depends upon their ability to develop and implement unique competitive strategies. In the strategic management field and, more recently, the area of international marketing, it has been shown that the appropriateness of a specific strategy depends on its fit with the context in which it is deployed; good fit positively affects export performance. To enhance export performance with a certain product market strategy, SMEs need to consider their internal environment and characteristics and implement their strategy in a right way. Thus, this dissertation suggests the strategic fits with product market strategies and international marketing strategy (marketing standardization) and organizational process (export market orientation).
Hypotheses derived from this framework were tested on a sample of SMEs in Korea. The findings suggest that the positive effect of cost leadership strategy on export performance, the positive moderating effect of marketing adaptation on the relationship between cost leadership strategy and export performance, and the positive moderating effect of export market orientation on the link between differentiation strategy and export performance. In addition to a basic model, this dissertation conducted post hoc interviews with a random selection of survey participants to explore the reasons for the unsupported hypotheses and tested for additional effects by several sub-group analyses. The additional findings show that SMEs pursuing a cost leadership strategy could not realize economies of scale through marketing standardization and might not need to gather and share export market intelligence actively, because they export small number of products in the limited export markets. Based on the empirical findings, this dissertation provides several important research as well as managerial implications.