The Effects of the Degree of Internationalization on Export Performance: A Research on Exporters in Turkey

Abstract

1.IntroductionAs the borders between the countries have disappeared and competition has been intense worldwide, internationalization of companies has become inevitable. At this point, determining the factors affecting the internationalization rate of companies and knowledge on the effectiveness of the export performance of the companies are important for the companies as well as for the economic achievements of the countries.The issue of internationalization was particularly addressed by several studies in the context of internationalization models (Fletcher, 2001; Forsgren, 2002; Jansson and Sandberg, 2008; Tuppura et al., 2008; Brennan and Garvey, 2009; Erdil, 2012), the barriers against internationalization (Bauerschmidt et al., 1985; O'Grady and Lane, 1996; Acs et al., 1997; Karagozoglu and Lindell, 1998) and internationalizationperformance relationship (Dean et al., 2000; Contractor, 2007; Pangarkar, 2008; Papadopoulos and Martin, 2010; Carneiro et al., 2011a; Prange and Verdier, 2011; Naik and Reddy, 2013; Singla and George, 2013; Kayabasi et al., 2010). Degree of Internationalization (DOI) and performance relationship (Tallman and Li, 1996; Lu and Beamish, 2001; 2004; Thomas and Eden, 2004; Ruigrok et al., 2007; Loncan and Nique, 2010) was among the topics that were scrutinized. However, studies on the degree of internationalization of companies in developing countries have been limited. Addressing internationalization, which has a very important role in the socio-economic development of particularly the developing countries (the degree of internationalization and the impact on export performance), would provide considerable contributions to the development of companies in particular, and the national economy in general.The main assumption of the internationalization process for companies is to capture opportunities for profitability in foreign markets as well as saturation in the domestic markets. When internationalization models are examined, it could be observed that the internationalization process is gradual starting from the domestic market and exports (Cavusgil, 1980). Thus, it could be argued that there exists exploration and exploitation periods between the company's native country and the foreign country (Bandeira-de-Mello et al., 2016). It seems necessary to establish international ties in these two periods as an expression of orientation and participation in foreign markets (Ogasavara et al., 2016). Internationalization of companies, based on the intensity of internationalization, continues within a structure that could be expressed as learning-participation, development of knowledge, and utilizing the opportunities in the market (Welch et al., 2016). While the experience acquired by companies in their domestic market is significant, the prolongation of the time spent in the home market creates a lack of knowledge about foreign markets (Blomstermo et al., 2004; Torlak et al., 2007; Altuntas et al., 2015).When internationalization process is considered as a mechanism of resources, it could be observed that the characteristics of company, resources and decision makers should be considered in conjunction based on organizational, entrepreneurial and technological factors (Dhanaraj and Beamish, 2003; Canitez and Yeniceri, 2007; Surer and Mutlu, 2012; Altuntas et al., 2015). Thus, the human factor is an important element of the degree of internationalization (Onkelix et al., 2016). The human factor has a significant impact on the pace of internationalization (Loane et al., 2007) and export performance (Ganotakis and Love, 2012) of companies. On the other hand, selection of country as an export market could be a significant costreducing factor for the relationships of the exports company with the domestic and foreign country (He et al., 2016) Furthermore, country-scale geographical expansion is considered as one of the indicators of the degree of internationalization, in other words the intensity of exports (Percin, 2005; Boehe and Jimenez, 2016). …