Korea Trade Review (무역학회지)

Korea Trade Research Association (한국무역학회)
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The Effect of Customer Experience on Export Performance in Overseas Marketing of SMEs: Moderating Effects of the Personal Contacts and Agility

중소기업의 해외마케팅에서 고객경험이 수출성과에 미치는 영향: 인적접촉과 민첩성의 조절효과

  • Se-Hwa Ahn (Department of Small and Medium-sized Enterprise Management, Korea University of Technology & Education)
  • 안세화 (한국기술교육대학교 강소기업경영학과)
  • Received : 2022.10.10
  • Accepted : 2022.10.30
  • Published : 2022.10.30
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Abstract

As the digital era accelerates, traditional perspectives have limitations in explaining the success or failure of export performance. The purpose of this study is to analyze new factors affecting export performance from the perspective of customer experience, which has emerged as an important factor in securing a competitive advantage and generating organizational performance. After deriving hypotheses based on literature review and discussion, a research model is designed in which three factors of customer experience such as understanding customer's objectives, customer value creation capability, and customer journey management are the antecedents, and export performance is the dependent variable. This model also includes organizational agility and personal contact as the moderating variables. To verify the hypotheses, multiple regression analysis was conducted on the collected data drawn from 198 SME exporters. According to the analysis results, it was found that all three antecedents positively affected export performance. In particular, the organizational agility and personal contact were confirmed to have a moderating effect that creates better export performance by interacting with customer value creation capability. The theoretical significance of this study is to find that effective customer experience management can be a key factor in creating export performance. The results suggest that checking the overall customer journey, exporters should select and intervene to intensively manage key touch points that can have a decisive impact on the quality of customer experience. At the end of the paper, practical implications to be considered in creating export performance through effective customer experience management are presented.

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