Market‐oriented behavior : Comparing service with product exporters

The activities of service and product firms are compared in terms of their market‐oriented behavior in their export operations (i.e. their export market‐oriented (EMO) behavior). Empirical analysis conducted on a sample of 783 Finnish exporters containing both service and product firms uncovered several interesting differences: service and product firms differed in their level of EMO behavior; the direct effects from EMO behavior to various dimensions of export success were invariant across the samples; however, the export environment moderated the link between EMO behavior and export profit performance in different ways across the samples. The results indicate that EMO behavior may be more appropriate under certain environmental conditions, and less appropriate under others. However, the nature of the relationship between EMO behavior and export success may also depend on whether the firm’s core export market offerings are services or physical products.