Contents and Editorial of International Journal of Export Marketing, 2018, Vol. 2, No. 3

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Int. J. Export Marketing, Vol. 2, No. 3, 2018
Contents
155 Editorial
Dafnis N. Coudounaris and Stanley Joseph Paliwoda
158 SME internationalisation and the role of global cities: a tentative
conceptualisation
Philippe Régnier and Pascal Wild
180 Firm innovation in the Asia and Pacific region: the role of governance
environment, firm characteristics, and external finance
Ashraf Abumousa
210 Global factory structure: the role of leadership
Isaac Nana Akuffo
231 Entrepreneurial marketing of international new ventures:
a decision-making perspective and propositions
Man Yang

Int. J. Export Marketing, Vol. 2, No. 3, 2018 155
Copyright © 2018 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.
Editorial
Dafnis N. Coudounaris*
School of Economics and Business Administration,
University of Tartu,
J. Liivi 4-104, 50409 Tartu, Estonia
Email: dafnis.coudounaris@ut.ee
*Corresponding author
Stanley Joseph Paliwoda
Department of Marketing,
Strathclyde Business School,
University of Strathclyde,
199 Cathedral Street, G4 0QU Glasgow, UK
Email: stan.paliwoda@strath.ac.uk
Biographical notes: Dafnis N. Coudounaris is an Associate Professor of
Innovation Management from the School of Economics and Business
Administration at the University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia. He received his BSc
in Economics from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens,
Postgraduate Diploma in Marketing from the Bristol Polytechnic, MSc in
International Business from the UMIST and PhD in Industrial Marketing from
the Luleå University of Technology. He has published several papers in
international journals such as MIR, JI Management, IBR, P&M and JBR. He
serves as a member of the editorial review boards of Journal of Business
Research and Journal of Innovation and Knowledge and member of the Board
of Governors of GIKA. He recently became a Fellow of the European
Mediterranean Academy of Business (EMAB).
Stanley Joseph Paliwoda is an Emeritus Professor of Marketing from the
Strathclyde Business School, Department of Marketing, University of
Strathclyde, Glasgow. He is a former Senior Examiner of the Institute of Export
in the UK and has written various textbooks and particularly a seminal one
entitled International Marketing with co-author Professor Michael Thomas. He
has published 65 articles in books and international journals. He is the Deputy
Editor of the Journal of Customer Behaviour and Fellow of both the Chartered
Institute of Marketing and Chartered Management Institute. He is an
international trustee of IP Management Poland and has served as a member of
several editorial boards.
Welcome to the third issue of Volume 2 of the International Journal of Export Marketing
(IJEXPORTM). We would like to inform academics that the forthcoming special issue
based on the Inaugural Nordic International Business and Export Marketing Conference
of 2018 held in Tallinn/Estonia, is in the process of being published in IJEXPORTM this
year. The current issue includes four papers in the field of export marketing and
international business. The four papers are summarised in the following paragraphs. The
first paper suggests a tentative conceptual framework to study the internationalisation of

156 D.N. Coudounaris and S.J. Paliwoda
SMEs, and the role of global cities as major business hubs providing a wide range of
supportive services facilitating market entry. The second paper investigates the impact of
the governance environment, firm characteristics, and external finance on firm
innovation. The third paper examines the role of leadership in the global factory
structure. This paper is based on a review of literature between 1984 to 2018 accessed
from EBSCO Discovery, Web of Science, Science Direct, Scopus, and Google Scholar.
Finally, the fourth paper is a conceptual paper which studies the entrepreneurial
marketing process in international new ventures by focusing on entrepreneurs’
decision-making.
The first paper by Regnier and Wild discusses the intermediation role of global cities
as major business hubs providing a wide range of supportive services which facilitate
market entry to internationalising SMEs. Their findings reveal that business services,
knowledge and talent in global cities meet the demand of internationalising SMEs for
functional and social networks. However, there is limited knowledge about how SMEs
are enabled to reduce distances to foreign markets by accessing reliable business
information. The empirical evidence of this study of Swiss internationalising SMEs
shows their linkages to 21 major global cities. As global cities offer functional and social
networks which are also reinforced overtime by global MNCs, it is observed that a small
number of internationalising SMEs (mainly from OECD economies) are making a similar
utilisation of global cities. In future studies, one expects to read the results of surveys and
best practice case studies on how and to what extent foreign SMEs access global cities as
providers of business development services needed to facilitate and secure their access to
distant and risky markets.
In the second study, based on cross-sectional data from the World Bank Enterprise
Survey (WBES) of 2015, Abumousa examines the influence of the governance
environment, firm characteristics and external finance on the firm’s innovation. The
study investigates 4,993 firms across seven countries from East Asia and the Pacific
region. While several aspects of innovation have been identified in previous innovation
research, this study defines that the firm’s innovation comprises the introduction of new
production outputs, investment activities, and the effectiveness of innovative outputs.
Furthermore, the study assesses the innovating firms’ performance based on their
prevailing business environment. The results show that firms can be innovative even
within weak court systems, and firms that pay bribes to public officials are innovative as
well. The study also reveals a significant association between some firm characteristics
and innovation, and, additionally, that external finance promotes innovation better than
internal finance does.
In the third paper, based on an investigation of 28 studies related to the global factory
(Buckley, 2009a, 2009b, 2011), Akuffo finds that only seven studies have considered
leadership in the context of global factory structure. A review of the existing literature
indicates that few empirical studies have been conducted on global factory structure and
most data was gathered from manufacturing firms with minimum attention paid to the
service firms. Furthermore, the study reveals that firms from emerging economies
encounter difficulty in breaking into global factory structure due to insufficient resources,
strategy and R&D investments. In addition, firms implement global factory structure to
maximise profit and to provide tailor-made services to their customers. Finally,
recommendations and future research are discussed.
Finally, Yang defines the concept of international entrepreneurial marketing and
identifies the dimensions of entrepreneurs, international entrepreneurial marketing

Editorial 157
culture, strategy, and tactics. Yang suggests a model of the international entrepreneurial
marketing process and develops propositions from a decision-making perspective based
on the effectuation theory. Her model suggests that entrepreneurs in international new
ventures adopt an effectual decision-making process, utilise international entrepreneurial
marketing culture and leverage contingences in the international business environment
to create new marketing opportunities. She concludes that the outcome of the
entrepreneurial decision-making process, international entrepreneurial marketing strategy
and tactics shape the international business environment and create new markets. Her
paper makes theoretical contributions in international marketing and international
entrepreneurship, as well as provides managerial implications for entrepreneurs or
managers who are engaged into international marketing activities.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank and express our appreciation to the following seven academics,
who spent their valuable time in the development of this issue: Bilge Aykol, Paul
Christodoulides, Salman Saleem, Sharon Thach, Tiia Vissak, Judith Zolkiewski and
Antonella Zucchella.
References
Buckley, P.J. (2009a) ‘The impact of the global factory on economic development’, Journal of
World Business, Vol. 44, No. 2, pp.131–143.
Buckley, P.J. (2009b) ‘Internalization thinking: from the multinational enterprise to the global
factory’, International Business Review, Vol. 18, No. 3, pp.224–235.
Buckley, P.J. (2011) ‘International integration and coordination in the global factory’, Management
International Review, Vol. 51, No. 2, pp.269–283.