Small businesses’ motives

Provides empirical findings concerning the motives for exporting of UK small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in different stages of the internationalization process. Findings are based on a large scale sample of UK SMEs, and MANOVA is employed to establish that statistical differences exist between the groups of firms in relation to their motives for undertaking export activities. Provides a contribution to the literature, since it questions whether current export assistance and targeting procedures are suitable for addressing the stimuli perceived as important by managers within different stages of export development.