Internationalisation barriers in low-tech South Asian exporting firms

This research is one of the first to examine internationalisation challenges for emerging economy low-tech SMEs. Based on primary data collected from 175 low-tech Indian firms, our SPSS and AMOS based analysis revealed that internationalisation barriers can be classified into five distinct categories, i.e., managerial, marketing, government, financial and procedural barriers. Findings revealed a strong correlation among different categories of internationalisation barriers. It was further found that procedural and regulatory barriers were most significant for low-tech firm internationalisation. Findings also revealed specific factors like firms’ age, sources of new buyers and sources of finance influencing internationalisation barriers. This study uses the resource-based view (RBV) paradigm to show how low-tech firms use internal resources to overcome complicated internationalisation barriers. Our study adds to the internationalisation literature by highlighting low-tech firms’ unique challenges and provides insights for practitioners, policymakers, and scholars to help emerging economy low-tech firms compete in international markets.