Research carried out by Keith Pyper, ESRC Funded Doctoral Researcher in the Marketing Department, and Emeritus Professor Michael Baker has been featured in the Financial Times.
Funded by the Marketing Trust, the study surveyed more than 200 winners from the past five years, and focuses on identifying and investigating the international marketing best practices undertaken by UK firms that have recently (2012-2016) won the Queen's Award for international trade. Given that these proven successful exporters will have developed effective international marketing strategies they will have also overcome barriers and financial constraints by the practices they adopt.
The study will replicate research undertaken by the Department of Marketing at Strathclyde University in the early 1980s by Professor Baker, published as 'Successful Exporting' in 1983. This early research also utilised a survey of Queen's Award winners, thus due to the continued success and longevity of the UK most prestigious business awards it is possible to replicate and advance the study. And this also allows for unique longitudinal insights into how best practices have progressed.
The context has certainly changed since the initial research in 1980 given the growth of powerful factors such as globalisation and the internet. However, these changes along with the inevitable changes the recent EU Brexit vote will bring arguably only serve to further emphasise the need to establish a comprehensive framework containing enduring and contemporary critical success factors that can be used to serve both the academic community for future research endeavours and practitioners formulating strategies for future export initiatives.
The research has three Main Objectives: