Cognitive or Affective? A longitudinal exploratory study on the drivers and theoretical underpinnings of perceived export barriers for New Zealand firms.

The firm-specific and economy-wide benefits of exporting are well-documented in international marketing research. Not only do New Zealand firms owe their long-term survival to international competitiveness, New Zealand cannot grow her economy without superior performance in the tradable sector. Research to stimulate firm-level export success has thus focused on two overarching questions. What prohibits ‘export ready’ firms from venturing abroad? What inhibits current exporters from expanding and growing their operations? The two research questions share a common answer; perceived export barriers. There exists four decades of empirical research to suggest that certain structural, instititutional, infrastructural, informational and attitudinal constraints prevent, or at the very least, discourage firm-level export performance. Further, research has also illustrated that it is more feasible to craft strategies for improving the performance of current exporters than it is to persuade domestic-only ventures to partake in exporting. One of the most effective ways for improving firm-level export success involves reducing the influence of perceived export barriers. However, to date, such efforts have had limited impetus because research has adopted a cross-sectional view on the export development challenge. To paint a more informative picture of the export development undertaking, we employ a longitudinal two-period comparison. Our research design involves administering an identical survey instrument to the the same working population of manufacturing exporters, in two waves of data collection set 15 years apart. We construct cognitive and emotive hypotheses by drawing links between changes in the operating environment and the influence of export barriers through time. Subsequent analysis unambiguously illustrates that the influence of perceived export barriers is evolutionary and appears to shift in sympathy with the changes in the firm’s operating environment. These results are fundamental because they signify that the export development challenge has changed markedly since 1995. While break-throughs in information and communication technology and increased integration of markets and trading systems, have been instrumental in reducing knowledge and informational barriers, New Zealand exporters still have to contend with internal resource constraints and legal and political obstacles both at home and abroad. This thesis carries substantial implications; From a scholarly perspective, this is the first study to adopt a longitudinal research design to predict change in export barrier perception over time. More importantly, the thesis infers the existence of both a cognitive and an emotive dimension in the influence of export barriers. At a managerial level, we argue the need for export strategies to continue to migrate from a selling to marketing approach. Finally, from a policy-making standpoint, we propose the imperative for export development stimuli to ‘move with the times’ because need-based schemes that were effective…