Abstract

Microenterprises represent most of all businesses and are an essential enabler of any nation’s renewal and sustainable growth. Despite its practical and scientific importance, little is known about what drives microenterprise managers to export. This study aims to bridge this gap by elaborating the export drivers from the perspective of microenterprises. The above-described can be condensed to the following research question: What are the drivers for exporting perceived by the managers of microenterprises? This multiple case study answers the research question by analysing export drivers in ten Finnish microenterprises. A framework of export drivers (Leonidou et al., 2007) was devised in this analysis. This study provided an in-depth analysis of the export drivers in a microenterprise context and summarised the findings in a preliminary framework. Based on this analysis, the drivers related to human resources, marketing, domestic market, foreign market, home government and customers are central to microenterprise export.