Contrasting Methods: An Explorative Investigation on Firm-Level Export Competitiveness Based on Qualitative and Quantitative Research Findings

Exports and exporting firms have long been studied in the fields of both international business (IB) and competitiveness. While IB concentrates on the performance of firms and, within this scope of interest, on the processes from a company or managerial perspective, the competitiveness stream has primarily focused on country-level implications from the point of view of policy making. Qualitative studies are frequent in IB research, while quantitative methods have been more widespread in competitiveness research. The novelty of this work is to use both types of research in relation to the same population in order to compare findings. Based on the notion that the qualitative and quantitative research are complementary, this paper investigates how SME performance can be assessed based on financial performance patterns and what conclusions can be drawn for competitiveness at firm and national levels. An explorative qualitative research — where financial figures were also collected — was performed in the case of ten Hungarian small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to discover the processes and mechanisms of export excellence. A quantitative research was performed to explore the financial performance patterns of privately-owned companies in Hungary. Findings show that export intensive SMEs are amongst the financially high performing Hungarian firms. Based on qualitative research findings, we propose that outstanding management, continuous learning and innovation — also frequent in competitiveness narratives — may be the factors explaining the success of such firms.