How does internationalization begin? The role of age at entry and export experience in the early stages of the process

Abstract

This article deals with two important concepts in the prior literature on the internationalization process: age at entry and export experience. Against previous research, we analyze how both of them influence simultaneously international behavior in the early stages of the internationalization process as a trade-off. For that aim, we analyze the influence of both variables on international behavior in the early stages of the internationalization process, from a dynamic perspective, looking at initial export behavior and speed during this period. We analyze export development process of 106 Spanish small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), most of them international new ventures, in their first 8 years of export activity, combining the effect of age at entry and experiential learning during this period, finding that age at entry and export experience exert not only a direct effect but also a moderation influence on initial export development, observing a trade-off between such influence as experience grows.