Small And Medium Sized Enterprises Case Study

Introduction:

This is a scientific reasearch paper about Small and Medium Sized Enterprises, and their internationlization in central and middle eastern Europe done by Máté Galambos and Marcell Bakos. Our work is mainly concered with the research question of how these enterprises go international and what supports do they need in order to make it in the global market. Naturally we have to clarify the meaning of internationalization itself. ‘Internationalisa-tion’ refers to all activities that put SMEs into a meaningful business relationship with a foreign partner: exports, imports, foreign directinvestment (FDI — relocation or outsourcing),international subcontracting and international technical cooperation (Tajani 2014). It is a complex
SMEs’ size, age and experience are important factors in their willingness and ability to internationalise. Exporting and importing activities increase as an enterprise grows more mature. The percentages of SMEs that export gradually increases from just over 15 % of enterprises up to 4 years old to nearly 30 % of enterprises 25 years old or more (EC, 2010, p 6). Is there any specific type of internationalisation that is particularly suitable to start with? SMEs most often start by importing. Of SMEs that both import and export, twice as many started by importing as by exporting and almost half of all the enterprises started imporint and exporting at the same time. Trade, manufacturing, transport and communication and research are the most international sectors. The sectors with the highest share of exporting SMEs are mining (58 %), manufacturing (56 %), wholesale trade (54 %), research (54 %), sales of motor vehicles (53 %), renting (39 %), and transport and communication (39 %). Among services, the research sector scores highly (EC, 2010, p
Thanks to technology nowdays businesses can extand their market through the web all over the globe. Therefore companies involved in e-commerce are more internationally active. Having the means to sell products or services online correlates positively with being active in export or import markets, even when controlled for other effects such as size of firm. The conclusion could be that the internet has made it easier for SMEs of all sizes to overcome some of the barriers to internationalisation. In fact, the relationship between certain barriers and size of firm has weakened because of the