ABSTRACT This study argues that certain elements of a company's marketing strategy are more determinant than others of high exporting performance. Results using several multivariate methods (correspondence analysis, discriminant analysis, lineal and logistic regression) show that specific marketing strategies increase the probability of high involvement in foreign markets. For example, our findings reveal that degree of product adaptation, price competitiveness and type of distribution network are explanatory of high performing exporting. The type of distribution network, however, has the largest explanatory power and should be given more weight when designing export promotion policies.