Impact of environmental factors as moderator on export marketing performance in wooden furniture industry

There has been a significant increased in the quantity and quality of international and export marketing research with respect to effective solutions towards export performance. However, an investigation on the impact of marketing strategy and export performance in a single industry is lacking. In addition, the influence of environmental factors to moderate the relationship between export marketing strategy and export performance has received little agreement. This research aims to investigate the relationship between export marketing strategy and export performance in Malaysian wooden furniture industry, as well as the influence of moderating role of environmental factors on the relationship between export marketing strategy and export performance. Personal interview, mail and phone interview methods were used to measure export marketing strategy, newly developed environmental factor variables which consists of global economic situation and certification, as well as export performance. The findings showed that there were no direct relationship between export marketing strategy and export performance. Uniquely, the moderating effect of certification appeared to moderate a few relationships between product and promotion adaptation, distribution strategy, design strategy and target market specification on export performance. Managerial implications and suggestions for future research were also discussed.