Relationship between Firm Size and Export Performance: An Exploratory Analysis

: The positive relationship between firm size and export behaviour is often considered certain. However, the vast number of studies in this area shows discrepancies in the findings: the majority of them confirm a positive and statistically significant relationship, some studies found no significant relationship and others suggested a negative association between firm size and export performance. This study attempts to clarify these conflicting findings in the export marketing literature by empirically examining the impact of firm size on export performance, by using different proxies for the variable ‘firm size’ and diverse indicators for the ‘export performance’ variable. The main aim of this study is to contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between firm size and export performance using a sample of Portuguese firms, of different industries, to explicitly control for possible sectorial factors influencing the relationship in analysis. We found that using the same sample of companies, if we vary the proxies used to measure the Firm size determinant, even fixing the Export performance proxy we have opposite signals of the impact of the determinant in the export performance.