Effect of international orientation on export performance in export companies (case study Leather industry of Iran)

Today, export acts as a fundamental strategy for guaranteeing survival and growth and companies and having competitive advantage in foreign markets has a positive effect on companies’ present and future export performance. In spite of this, in intentional marketing field, sufficient information and knowledge about export performance is focused on a set of various and scattered set of variables. Hence, studying the factors affecting export performance appears to be of great importance. The aim of the present study is to examine the effect of international orientation on export performance of exports companies in Iran’s Leather Industry and for this purpose, 385 of the experts and mangers in manufacturing and export companies in Iran’s Leather Industry were selected by using simple random sampling method and completed the research questionnaire. Content validity of this questionnaire was confirmed by experts in this field and its reliability was also confirmed by Cronbach’s alpha test. In the end, data collected from research questionnaires was analyzed by using structural equations test in LISREL 88. And results indicated that research model has a satisfactory goodness of fit. Model’s results also indicated that international orientation has a significant effect on export performance of export companies in Leather Industry of Iran; internal international orientation has a significant effect on economic and non-economic criteria of export performance of export companies in Leather Industry of Iran; external international orientation has a significant effect on economic and non-economic criteria of export performance of export companies in Leather Industry of Iran.