Small -and Medium- Sized Enterprises (SMEs) Entering International Market for Sustainable Growth

Increase in globalization and internationalization in markets has created a complex business environment for all size firms. This has led to the transformation of the relationships between firms and growing use of cooperation agreements by all firms especially small -and medium- sized enterprises (SMEs) that are seeking opportunities in international markets. In this direction, as SMEs recognize the need to utilize their limited resources more effectively to compete with more powerful competitors in the global arena, owner/managers internationalize their operations by cooperating at the strategic level. The aims of these cooperations are to pursue growth opportunities, to access additional relationships, to reduce uncertainty and to overcome their size barrier and to expand businesses in the new geographic markets. In the literature, internationalization processes have mainly been studied for multinational corporations (MNCs) but less for SMEs, which tend to have been neglected in internationalization research (Jansson & Sandberg 2008). But a better understanding of the process of entering international markets will help small firms avoid potential obstacles to success (Rowden 2001). In this context, the main purpose of this study is to enhance the understanding of the cooperative internationalization strategy of SMEs. Our study focuses on providing information on the SMEs business characteristics, the concept of internationalization, motivations, processes, advantages and disadvantages of SMEs’ internationalization, cooperative internationalization of SMEs, network model such as Sectoral Foreign Trade Companies (SFTC) used in Turkey, and making suggestions for owner/managers of SMEs to develop successful foreign market entry process by cooperating with other firms