Investigating the Effects of Digitalization on the Export Performance of SMEs, Emphasizing the Mediating Role of Export Readiness

Aim and Introduction: Despite the significant role of exports in the development of the country's economy and the increasing penetration of digital technologies in businesses, there are still many obstacles and challenges to the use of digital technologies, such as management challenges, lack of sufficient capacity to use new technologies, infrastructural barriers, and sanctions especially for Iranian firms and for SMEs, etc. Also, the smaller the scale of these companies, the higher the risk they will face. In another word, the competitive environment and political and economic problems become more complicated for exporting firms and young SMEs, and low-experienced ones. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct some local research in this field due to the relative lack of existing research. Therefore, the question arises whether the digitalization of companies, despite those limitations and challenges, has been able to affect export performance, and if the answer is yes, how this effect has been. Thus, our main goal is to investigate the direct and indirect effects of digitization on export performance and evaluate the mediating role of export readiness among SMEs. Focusing on SMEs internationalization among the Iranian companies in this research is considered an innovative matter.
Methodology: This research is applied research. To design the questionnaire, after library studies and a review of available documents, we interviewed several university academics and export experts. After applying their opinion, a questionnaire was designed as a data collection tool. Then the validity and reliability of this questionnaire were checked and approved. The statistical population of this research is all Iranian small and medium-sized companies that are active in the field of export and have experience using at least one of the e-commerce processes, including buying, selling, transferring, and exchanging goods or providing information through the Internet. Due to the lack of a specific database of export SMEs, 70 SMEs were specified as the statistical sample size according to the opinion of some academics. The sampling method in this research was non-random and the questionnaire was distributed among 70 available export companies. Respondents to the questionnaire were considered to be one representative of each company. Therefore, the measurement units in this research are companies. After collecting the data, the structural equation method was used to explain the theoretical model and analyze the research assumptions.
Finding: The results of collecting the responses of 70 export SMEs showed that most of the average digitization was equal to 2.94, export readiness was equal to 3.16, and export performance was equal to 2.68. Additionally, the digitalization components were correlated with export readiness and export performance. Furthermore, all factor loadings were 95% significant. Then we find out that digitization has direct and indirect effects on export performance. However, the amount of indirect effect through the mediation of the role of export readiness has been higher. It was also confirmed that digitization strengthens export readiness and strengthening export readiness leads to increased export performance.
Discussion and Coclusion: In the context of the direct impact of digitalization on export performance, the results showed that despite the challenges such as management challenges, enforced sanctions, and other export obstacles companies are faced especially small and medium-sized companies, digitalization has been able to directly increase their export performance. Also, the effect of digitalization on export performance was confirmed indirectly. The findings of this research confirmed that digitization in the four dimensions of digital infrastructure, e-commerce, electronic business processes, and digital marketing has been able to improve the export readiness of companies in the fields of management capability, employee competence, access to more financial resources, knowledge management and application of lessons learned and previous experiences in export, competitive advantage in international markets, level of technical knowledge and expertise, ability to analyze financial issues, international marketing performance (in the field of branding, advertising, negotiation, pricing, and distribution), logistics, and access to statistics and information. On the other hand, those companies that had higher export readiness showed higher export performance. Based on this, export readiness has been able to play a mediating role in the relationship between digitization and export performance. However, regarding the comparison of the effectiveness of digitalization in two direct and indirect ways on export performance, the findings of the research indicate that this relationship was stronger indirectly and through the mediating role of export readiness. Since the effectiveness of digitalization on export performance is stronger through the indirect route and the mediating role of export readiness, managers should keep in mind that if planning for digitalization is done to strengthen each of the components related to export readiness, it can have a greater impact on the export their business performance. To localize and develop the current model, researchers can repeat the research separately for different industries and regions and check the effect of digitization on export performance for each condition.