Influence of Strategic Factors on Early Internationalization of Small and Medium Enterprises in Nigeria

Abstract

The study on strategic factors and internationalization of small medium enterprises (SMEs) has continued to gain attention across the globe as most indigenous organization desire to take their products and services to international markets. As such, this study tried to ascertain the influence of the strategic factors element of the early internationalization process and tendencies of firms going to foreign market within the period of one to five years which signifies early internationalization. Two different objectives emanated from that main goal: The first is to investigate the influence of firm orientation on early internationalization mode, and the second is to assess the relationship between early internationalization strategies and success of SMEs. Two hypotheses were tested in line with the objectives through the data collected from purposively selected twenty companies in various industries through standardized questionnaires. Both descriptive and inferential statistics was explored to evaluate the hypotheses and variable relationships. The findings reveal that strategic factors significantly affect internationalization of firms when organization put into consideration both external and internal factors towards internationalization, it further shows relationship exist between the factors and what affects SMEs from going global. The study finally recommends that SMEs should consider strategic factors as it will help them to avoid pitfalls while going international.