SME's and the Internationalization of Food Exports

Internationalization is a process in which specific attitudes or orientations are associated with successive stages in the evolution of international operations and is a key element of entrepreneurship. International retailing as a subject area is concerned with explaining the directional and motivational issues associated with the process in the retail industry. The Irish food industry’s role as an industry based on innovative and competitively priced products, produced using quality agricultural inputs through the application of the latest production, logistics and marketing technologies, means that even in the context of a likely decline in the volume of Irish primary agricultural production, the Irish food industry can be expected to continue to be an important contributor to Irish national income.By looking at the current business climate it is evident that internationalization is growing at a rapid rate. In today’s business environment an increasing number of firms realise that international expansion represents an opportunity to increase ones target market and also to achieve further growth. Internal and external factors may provide the firm with the reasons and opportunity and motive to go international. Internal factors provide the absolute advantage while external factors may provide the motives. This book identifies these factors associated with exporting foodstuffs into retail by conceptualising internationalization theory in a manner that accommodates the extra problems associated with the exportation of foodstuffs to retail.