Modelling firms propensity to continue service exporting: a cross-country analysis

The pivotal role of services in international business is now receiving widespread recognition. Furthermore, the global marketplace is being increasingly characterised by the speed and ease with which such services cross national boundaries. This exploratory study of Australian and Dutch service exporters provides, for the first time, an understanding of the factors that stimulate such exporters to continue on the internationalisation path. Our results confirm that the level of satisfaction/dissatisfaction with recent past export efforts, export revenue as a percentage of total sales (a measure of export commitment), as well as other more traditional motives for exporting, do explain a reasonable proportion of the variance in propensity to continue exporting. However, some interesting variations emerged between Australian and Dutch firms in their motives to continue exporting.