Export Performance through Effective Marketing Practices: An Investigation of Pakistani Manufacturing Export Firms

Abstract

This study aims to highlight the importance of export in the growth of economy especially in developing countries during globalization. Aggressive export growth of a country is not possible without effective marketing practices, while, to know the impact of marketing practices, it is necessary to identify and quantify the direct or indirect causal relationship between marketing determinants and export performance. The study focuses on Resource Based View (RBV) of exports. The export firms in manufacturing industries of textile, food group and marble industry are unit of analysis. The export performance scale developed by Zou, Fang, and Zhao (2003) is adapted and refined in accordance with several other studies. Substantively, this study empirically investigates the degree of relationship among product strategies, placement strategies, pricing strategies and promotional activates (Explanatory variables) with exports performance of the firms (Dependent variable). While, branding and costing strategies are considered as mediating variables. The study applies the basic marketing concepts because to the best of my knowledge, no prior research is available in this context in Pakistan. It is preliminary marketing research to test export marketing theory in order to determine if it is supported by real world evidence in Pakistan. Therefore, present study is an effort to fill the literature gap for academicians in the field of export marketing in Pakistan. At the same time, it offers detailed insight and recommendations to policy makers and managers to enhance marketing capabilities. For estimation, Correlation followed by Regression analysis, as a most popular and standard analytical approach in measuring export performance is adopted. Wherein, a commonly used method known as Ordinary Least Square (OLS) is applied to draw