Strategic choices of SMES on foreign markets: someevidence from an Italian sample

Internationalisation has become part of the daily life of most small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Consequently, literature has emphasized the role of this strategic choice focusing on several as-pects, such as motivations, entry mode choices, internationalisation trajectories etc. The main focus in international business research thus has been on “why” those firms become international, on “which patterns” they follow in their international experience, while the strategic aspects, the “how” side of internationalisation of SMEs has received less at-tention (Bell et al. 2004). This paper wants to focus on this literature gap, analysing how inter-nationalised SMEs behave strategically abroad (from developing competitive advantage to designing market strategies to adapta-tion/standardisation decision in marketing mix) and how the strategic choices combine to high export performance measured as export in-tensity. We are going to present the Italian results of an international re-search program, involving European SMEs and European research-ers in International Business. The study is still at the explorative level, so the methodology is based on descriptive and correlation analysis. The findings constitute research hypotheses that need fur-ther development. The results underline preference for strategic flexibility, which involves a market widening rather than a market deepening attitude and the typical trait of Italian family businesses, focused on customers and not on markets, ready to respond to each customer needs but not to adapt to foreign market requirements.