90 / Journal of Marketing, January 2004 Journal of Marketing Vol. 68 (January 2004), 90–108 Neil A. Morgan, Anna Kaleka, & Constantine S. Katsikeas Antecedents of Export Venture Performance: A Theoretical Model and Empirical Assessment Both the size and the rapid growth of global exporting have focused the attention of marketing researchers on the factors associated with firms’ export performance. However, knowledge of this increasingly important domain of marketing activity remains limited. To address this knowledge gap, the authors draw on the strategy and market- ing literature to develop an integrative theory of the antecedents of export venture performance. The interplay among available resources and capabilities, competitive strategy decisions, and competitive intensity determines export venture positional advantages and performance outcomes in the theoretical model. The authors empirically assess predicted relationships using survey data from 287 export ventures. Results broadly support the theoreti- cal model, indicating that resources and capabilities affect export venture competitive strategy choices and the positional advantages achieved in the export market, which in turn affect export venture performance outcomes. In contrast to structure–conduct–performance theory predictions, the data indicate that the competitive intensity of the export marketplace does not have a direct effect on export venture positional advantages or performance. How- ever, competitive intensity moderates the relationship between export venture competitive strategy choices and the positional advantages realized. Neil A. Morgan is Assistant Professor of Marketing, Kenan-Flagler Busi- ness School, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (e-mail: Neil_Mor- gan@unc.edu). Anna Kaleka is Lecturer in Marketing and Strategy (e- mail: kalekaA@cardiff.ac.uk), and Constantine S. Katsikeas is Sir Julian Hodge Professor of Marketing (e-mail: Katsikeas@cardiff.ac.uk), Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University.The authors thank Rick Bagozzi, Nigel Piercy, Bill Perreault, Saeed Samiee, Doug Vorhies, and the three anony- mous JM reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. W orldwide exporting has grown to exceed five tril- lion dollars annually and accounts for more than 10% of global economic activity (e.g., Interna- tional Monetary Fund 2001; World Bank 2001). Because of increasing globalization, exporting is also a means of for- eign market entry and sales expansion for firms; thus, it is a significant area of research interest in marketing (e.g., Cavusgil and Kirpalani 1993; Samiee and Anckar 1998). Researchers have responded to managers’ and policymak- ers’ interests by focusing attention on the internal (e.g., international experience, standardization of marketing pro- grams) and external (e.g., industry technology, export mar- ket characteristics) antecedents of firms’ export performance (e.g., Aaby and Slater 1989; Cavusgil and Zou 1994; Szy- manski, Bharadwaj, and Varadarajan 1993). However, despite increased attention, theoretical and empirical knowl- edge of exporting remains limited and offers few insights for managers who are responsible for export performance and policymakers who are concerned with export trade develop- ment (Czinkota 2000; Katsikeas, Leonidou, and Morgan 2000). The literature highlights three particular problems that limit existing research. First, the majority of studies either are descriptive and largely atheoretic (Axinn 1994; Kat- sikeas, Leonidou, and Morgan 2000) or draw on a wide range of divergent theoretical perspectives (Aaby and Slater 1989; Zou and Stan 1998). The resulting lack of a compre- hensive theory base for explaining firms’ export perfor- mance makes it difficult to integrate findings from different studies into a coherent body of knowledge (e.g., Aulakh, Kotabe, and Teegen 2000; Zou and Stan 1998). Second, the export venture (i.e., the firm’s efforts in a single product or product line exported to a specific foreign market) has been identified as the primary unit of analysis in understanding export performance (Ambler, Styles, and Xiucum 1999; Myers 1999). Despite this, most studies adopt a firm-level unit of analysis and aggregate firms’ various product-market export ventures (Katsikeas, Leonidou, and Morgan 2000; Madsen 1987), which makes it difficult to identify and iso- late specific antecedents of export performance because firm-level analyses fail to capture differences in the strate- gies executed by export ventures that face various market- place requirements (Ambler, Styles, and Xiucum 1999; Cavusgil and Zou 1994). Third, export performance is mul- tidimensional, incorporating both economic and strategic dimensions (Bello and Gilliland 1997; Zou, Taylor, and Osland 1998). However, most studies use individual perfor- mance measures, such as the firm’s export ratio, which may not represent important economic and strategic aspects of export performance (e.g., Cavusgil and Zou 1994; Shoham 1998). In addition, the many unrelated performance indica- tors used in different studies also make integration of empir- ical findings problematic (Aaby and Slater 1989; Aulakh, Kotabe, and Teegen 2000; Diamantopoulos 1998). In this article, we address these three problems. We develop and empirically assess a comprehensive theory of