Every newsletter, we will examine a recent empirical research article and examine its implications for marketing. If there are any specific areas you would like us to investigate, let us know at src@srchk.com .

Hart, S., and Tzokas, N (1999) The impact of marketing research activity on SME export performance: evidence from the UK . Journal of Small Business Management, 37(2), p.63

This article explored the relationship between marketing research information gathering behaviour and export performance.

Using a sample of 150 SME's, 50 usable questionnaires were received, examining a variety of marketing research activities and very importantly, their use. Performance was operationalized as the ratio of export sales and profits to company sales and profits.

The results suggest significant relationships for various facets of the activities investigated. Formal marketing activities such as surveys and test marketing are statistically strong measures of export performance. Both the extent and type of information collected has a strong association with performance. Additionally, the use of such information is also significantly related to the two measures of export performance.

Specifically, performance is strongly related to adherence to insight gained from the marketing research in making decisions.

IMPLICATIONS

The results are intuitively appealing as they support the notion that collection and appropriate use of marketing information for decision making is significantly associated with export performance. The study also supports elements of the market orientation concept in that information gathering and dissemination is crucial to firm success. One should generalize these results with caution however as the sample is from the UK and addresses only selected industries. It would be interesting to see if culture and management practices would mediate this relationship and how. Also, using only two measures of performance has limitations.