Export exit: literature review and a research agenda

Abstract

This study consolidates previous research on export exits by reviewing, assessing, and synthesizing extant research. Specifically, we map and analyse the literature on export exits to explore its intellectual structure, identify the key themes and topics, and discuss potential avenues for future research on the subject. By analysing 90 articles authored by 183 scholars and published in the period 1986 - mid-2021, our findings identify four distinct communities of studies. The studies in the second community are mostly concerned with the nonlinear process of export entries and exits rather than the factors increasing (or decreasing) the probability of export exits. Recent research in this group explores how different factors related to decision-making logic, knowledge, and network relationships influence and shape the export exit process. Studies in the third community are embedded in economics and aims to provide detailed evidence on export entry and exit behaviour of firms by developing econometric models that can explain this behaviour. The fourth community of studies examines export exits from a finance perspective, with a particular focus on the link between a firm's financial health and access to financing in relation to export exits. We argue that while the overarching topic of de-internationalization has received growing attention across different business disciplines, the delineation of export exits in the more general de-internationalization studies is limited. The narrative synthesis identified themes broadly associated with determinants of export exit, export exit as part of the de-internationalisation process, and consequences (effects) of export exits. We find that extant knowledge does not differentiate between types of export exist, e.g. exit from a single or multiple markets. Moreover, the literature on export exists is isolated in distinct disciplinary silos that confine interdisciplinary learning on how, when, under what conditions, and why companies decide to stop exporting to some markets or withdraw from exporting altogether.