Perceptions of Export Barriers and Cultural Issues

The journal, Perceptions Of Export Barriers And Cultural Issues: The SME Ecommerce Experience, written by Glen Hornby (Griffith University), Paula Goulding (Murdoch University) and Simpson Poon (Charles Sturt University) has done their study about perception of barriers and how effectively the Internet can help to break down such barriers differs between Australian and UK SMEs. This journal also have identified different approaches to addressing cultural differences based on the firm’s export philosophy could be found among Australian exporters. The Internet has become an integral part of most successful businesses. Two of the most commonly cited benefits of E-Commerce revolve around being a low cost and effective marketing tool and an ability to reach out to a global. Although there being many studies on how SMEs adopt E-Commerce, this research focuses on how use of the Internet affects perception of export barriers, and the how cultural issues are faced by different export philosophies taken by SME exporters when adopting E-Commerce.

From analysis, Bennett (1998) concluded German exporters were more ethnocentric in their approach to export business. The 1998 study by Bennett pointed towards the need of further examination of export philosophies, which may be able to give further explanation of confounding results. In term of Export Philosophies, Perlmutter (1969) was one of the first of many (see Kandasaami, 1998) to discuss the various attitudes or orientations that can be taken in international trade: ethnocentricity (global integration), polycentricity (national responsiveness), regionacentricity (regional integration and national responsiveness), and geocentricity (global integration and national responsiveness). Herbig (1998) looks at international orientation by the degree of standardisation or adaptation. Toyne and Walter (1993) have discussed the market extension approach. First is Standardised Approach. The standardisation approach operates on...