Ewa Baranowska-Prokop

  Warsaw School of Economics

Poland

ebarano@sgh.waw.pl

Competitive strategy versus sector-speciFIc determinants in success perception of Polish born globals

Tomasz Sikora

  Warsaw School of Economics

Poland

tsikora@sgh.waw.pl

ABSTRACT. The main objective of this paper is to describe and compare the impact of two factors: competitive strategy (analyzed mainly through marketing-mix tools) and sector-specific determinants (i.e. industry type), on success perception of Polish born globals. The statistical analysis (SPSS) has been applied to the original data set obtained from 256 Polish SMEs through a questionnaire and CATI technique. The outcomes have been evaluated against three hypotheses. Our research revealed that unlike the born globals from highly developed countries, the success perception of decision makers from Polish early internationalized firms is only weakly affected by the industry type. The decision makers strongly support the statement that the success of their firms depends on competitive strategy and marketing tools which they apply. The answer to the basic research problem is that competitive strategy plays more important role than sector-specific determinants in success perception of Polish early internationalized firms.

Received: February, 2015

1st Revision: April, 2015

Accepted: May, 2015

DOI: 10.14254/2071-

8330.2015/8-1/1

JEL Classification: L10, M10, M31.

Keywords: born global, competitive strategy, marketing-mix tools, success perception, sector-specific determinants