The relationship between marketing orientation and export success among manufacturing companies in the Western Cape

In 1985, the writer joined the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) as an export trade advisor in the Western Cape Regional Office. The function of this position is to encourage companies to export and to assist companies registered as exporters with their export endeavours. In this capacity, the writer came into contact with more than 1,000 companies covering a wide range of products, problems, attitudes and situations. It became apparent to the writer that a large number of these companies lacked a marketing orientation in their export activities. There also appeared to be a poor success rate among these exporters in that probably as many as half of the number of registered exporters never achieved any export sales and of the remaining exporters only a few obtained substantial, ongoing and profitable sales abroad. The writer believed that if these companies approached their export activities in a more marketing orientated fashion, their success rate would be significantly improved. This begged the question as to whether a relationship actually exists between export marketing orientation and export success. It is the abovementioned relationship that this study primarily addresses. It was decided to keep the scope of this study confined to manufacturing companies in the Western Cape registered as exporters with the DTI.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

School of Management Studies

Year dc:date.issued

1988

Author dc:creator

• Bothma, Cornelius Henry

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Brice, Helen

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/8376

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/8376