A Preliminary Assessment of Croatian SME Exporters' Internationalization: Is There a Gap?

This paper deals with an analysis of the internationalization process of Croatian SME exporters. The traditional theory of internationalization suggests that a firm gradually develops an international presence. Internationalization process can be divided into two aspects: attitudinal (orientational) and strategic action. Preliminary research was conducted in two stages. First the findings from secondary data analysis suggest that Croatian SME exporters are oriented towards regional markets. Also, the notion that size of the company significantly determines the number of the export markets that the firms serves has been confirmed in the Croatian setting as well as in a previous research. Secondly, the primary research indicates that Croatian SME exporters are showing significant signs of geocentric behavior (through the global mindset scale) but yet most of their exports are reaching the countries in region mostly. This gap represents an interesting research proposal for further future investigations within the internationalization phenomenon.