What New Exporters Think about U.S. Government Sponsored Export Promotion Services and Publications

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to investigate new exporter awareness and use of various U.S. government assistance services and publications. A total of SS exporting firms responded to a questionnaire. The study reveals that many of the firms surveyed were, in fact, aware of and have successfully used various government assistance programs in starting their operations. Findings in this study contradict other known studies on this topic which conclude that assistance services and publications sponsored by the U.S. government are generally underutilized and not very helpful. Ways to make government assistance programs even more beneficial to new exporters are also discussed. INTRODUCTION The U.S. Department of Commerce through its International Trade Administration (ITA) sponsors many activities and publications designed to assist new exporters sell their products in overseas markets. Types of assistance range from organizing trade fairs and trade missions abroad to offering local how to export seminars and providing extensive published information about foreign marketing opportunities and business practices. There are numerous studies in the literature in the past fifteen years which have investigated the awareness and usefulness of sponsored assistance The best formal academic studies on the subject include those by Brady and Gill 1981, Czinkota and Ricks 1981, Czinkota 1982, Walters 1983, Kedia and Chokes 1986, Seringhaus 1986, and Kessing 1992. All of these studies are very comprehensive and reveal significant insight about government assistance programs for exporters. Prior studies generally conclude that programs are underutilized and, when used, not very helpful. This conclusion applies to exporters of all sizes, selling a wide variety of merchandise for varying lengths of time. Unfortunately, none of these studies focused exclusively on new exporters and their awareness and use of Any reference to new exporters at all was usually minor with most new exporter information hidden in the big picture analysis which was not broken down by length of time a firm has exported. The purpose of this study is to re-examine exporter awareness and perceived usefulness of current promotion services and publications. This study differs from earlier attempts in that it is limited to an investigation of new exporters only. This is a key differentiation because government assistance programs have always been designed to specifically help new-to-export firms but yet no known studies exist which exclusively investigate new exporters' reactions to Based upon thirty years of real world experience developing and implementing programs for numerous companies, the author believes that new exporters do, in fact, depend heavily upon U.S. government sponsored services and publications when designing their plans. The intent of this study was to determine whether this gut feel is true via an objective formal study examining this issue. Unique to this study is that for analysis purposes, publications are separated from other promotional services such as trade missions, consulting, etc., and are evaluated separately. Prior studies lump publications with all other services under the general heading ITA programs. METHOD AND DATA To obtain information required for the study, mail questionnaires were sent to presidents or owners at 152 Indiana manufacturing firms. The mailing list was compiled from data provided by the district office located in Indianapolis and includes all known new-toexport firms within the state that received their first order in the past year. Current company addresses, SIC code numbers, and names of persons to whom the survey forms were sent were obtained from the 1994 edition of the Indiana Manufacturers Guide. Each company surveyed was sent a three page questionnaire, a cover letter identifying the nature of the project and a postage paid return envelope. …