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...ng on the dimension of export performance being considered. Implications for the management of exporting relationships are discussed. Keywords: export marketing, performance, adaptation-standardization. The topic of global marketing is widely viewed as one of the most vital marketing topics for the 21st century. In an era of global markets, firms will have to compete with international corporations from a wide range of markets that have the capacity to offer the best products in the world. Over the past four decades, world exports have grown exponentially, reaching nearly 20% of the world’s gross domestic product. And while exporting is now one of the fastest growing economic activities, there is still no strong theoretical framework for researching export activity phenomena (see Cavusgil and Zou 1994 as a notable exception). By developing conceptualizations of exporting activities, the firm will be better able to implement successful exporting strategies that may improve its overall performance and reduce its dependence on the domestic market. Thus, export strategies may assume an important role within the firm as a means of reducing production costs, stabilizing cyclical demand, and reaching new markets. Such a purpose motivates this research. A better understanding of marketing in international settings is essential in order to improve performance and to avoid losses from saturated domestic markets. The international marketing literature has primarily considered the extent to which firms will standardize their marketing mix strategies to international contexts as a function of the internal and external environments of the firm. In this research, we adopt this perspective of marketing strategy standardization to consider how these strategies are formulated as a function of past performance and internal (management) and external (market) forces. We also consider how these aspects of the firm’s environment influence the importance of exporting activities within the firm and performance improvement in the short-term. In doing so, our work differs from past research (such as Cavusgil and Zou 19941) in a number of ways. First, this research focuses on the determinants of short-term performance as a means to understand the building blocks of long-term performance. This strategy also helps to shed light on the initial managerial reactions and immediate adjustments to marketing mix strategy and its effects on performance. Second, this study is one of few that consider the role of marketing strategy formulation and past period performance; these considerations inform our understanding of the reactive nature of managers, an aspect that past research has neglected. Much research to date assumes that managers are proactive in their development of strategy; we consider the possibility that managers are reactive to past performance results. Third, this research considers a variety of internal and external determinants of marketing mix strategy that have received little or no attent...