The internationalisation process: case-studies of Swedish small and medium sized enterprises entering the German market

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The internationalisation literature tends to rely on large multinational enterprises as the traditional unit of analysis, despite the fact that SMEs are active in international markets. In a Nordic study, SMEs experienced the choice of distribution channel as the largest barrier to exports. Further, Germany is Sweden's most important export market. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis was to investigate how the internationalisation process of Swedish SMEs when entering the German market can be characterised. The research was conducted by personal interviews in two case-study firms in the engineering industry. The conclusion is that the internationalisation process of these SMEs did not correspond to most of the accepted theory models, which seems to support the criticism of these models that some researchers have presented. I recommend the management of SMEs to appreciate the importance of planni...