Export strategies: archetypes and their performance impacts

However, few contributions actually unbundle and empirically corroborate various export strategies and their profit impacts. After collecting data on five exploratory cases, we conducted an empirical analysis of 97 small and medium-sized Italian manufacturing furniture firms. This article offers two main findings: first, a k-means cluster analysis shows the existence of four export archetypes. Second, those export archetypes are found to have significantly different effects on export performance. The article concludes with reflections on export strategies that could be most effective for small and medium-sized firms.