An examination of the foreign market knowledge of exporting firms based in the People's Republic of China : its determinants and effect on export intensity

Although the critical role of knowledge in generating organizational advantage has been increasingly recognized in the strategic management field, there is little research examining firm-specific foreign knowledge, the construct itself, its determinants, and impact on export performance. This study seeks to extend the foreign market knowledge literature in three ways. First, the current study develops a conceptual model of determinants of foreign market knowledge, based on the social capital theory. It explains how structural and relational social capital affects the creation of foreign market knowledge. Second, this study substantiates the theoretical link between foreign market knowledge and export intensity, which has been put forward by the internationalization process model with empirical evidence. Third, to expand the generalizability of the present foreign market knowledge model, this study tests the model using firms from different industrial types and product categories in a newly developing country, that is, the People's Republic of China.