Adamantios Diamantopoulos and Nikolaos Kakkos
Executive Summary
Understanding how managers evaluate their firm’s export performance is important because it reveals how practitioners assess the accomplishment of different export objectives, as well as the frames of reference and time horizons they use to assess these accomplishments. Diamantopoulos and Kakkos attempt to provide insights into the complex issue of managers’ export performance assessments by developing a framework that accommodates multiple and differentially weighted export objectives as well as different modes of assessment. This framework explicitly recognizes that different firms may place different importance on different export objectives (e.g., sales versus profitability goals), that the evaluation of any specific objective can be undertaken using different frames of reference (e.g., the firm’s own plan versus that of the competition), and that different time horizons (i.e., short- versus long-term perspectives) may underlie such performance assessments.
Using this framework Diamantopoulos and Kakkos propose an index of overall assessed export performance (AEP) that provides a summary evaluation of the firm’s export performance as assessed by the firm’s decision makers. This index accounts for managers’ degree of satisfaction with the attainment of alternative export objectives and the differential importance they attach to such objectives. To operationalize the framework, Diamantopoulos and Kakkos apply the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) methodology, which enables the simultaneous consideration of multiple (and potentially conflicting) export objectives, multiple frames of reference, and multiple time perspectives. Then, they illustrate the application of the framework and the subsequent calculation of the AEP index with empirical data from 171 exporting firms drawn from an online survey of export managers. They show how the AHP approach and the AEP index can be used to accommodate the individuality of each firm in terms of its export objectives and unique mode of assessment, as well as how valid interfirm comparisons can be made. They suggest that the AEP index can be used alongside established measures of export performance (particularly objective measures) to provide a more rounded evaluation of a company’s export success.
Biography
Adamantios Diamantopoulos (BA, MSc, PhD, FBAM) is Professor and Chair of International Marketing at the University of Vienna, Austria. He joined the University of Vienna in 2004 from Loughborough University Business School (UK), where he held the Chair of Marketing and Business Research. Other prior academic posts include full-time appointments at the University of Wales, University of Edinburgh, and the University of Strathclyde, as well as visiting positions in the United States, Sweden, Germany, France, and Greece. His main research interests are in international marketing and research methodology, and his work has appeared in Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of International Business Studies, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, International Journal of Research in Marketing, International Journal of Forecasting, and Journal of International Marketing, among others Journals.
Nikolaos Kakkos graduated with a PhD in International Marketing from Loughborough University (UK). He also holds an MSc in Project Management (Heriot-Watt, Edinburgh, UK), and his first degree is in engineering (TEI Larisa, Greece). He lectures in marketing in the postgraduate programs of the Technological Education Institute of Larisa and Staffordshire and Coventry Universities. His main research interests are in the areas of exporting, marketing metrics and business performance measurement. His research work in the assessment of export performance was supervised by Professor Adamantios Diamantopoulos and has been presented in top international conferences.
Journal of International Marketing, Vol. 15, No. 3, September 2007
View Table of Contents.