Factors Affecting Awareness and Usage of Government Export Marketing Assistance Programs and Their Relationships
Chol Lee, Sang-Yong Kim · 2009
The research aims to identify factors affecting the use of government export marketing assistance programs and future improvements of the programs. 500 Korean exporting firms were used as a sample and research hypotheses were tested by the structural equation modeling using AMOS 7.0. The empirical findings are as follows. First, exporting firms' awareness of export marketing assistance programs showed a positive impact on their use of the programs. Second, small exporters showed higher awareness and use of the programs than large ones. Third, the firms with low export intensity showed higher awareness and use of the programs than those with high export intensity. Fourth, exporters having high orientations for overseas market showed higher awareness and use of the programs than those with low international orientations. Fifth, exporters having high proportion of direct exports showed higher awareness and use of the programs than those with low proportion of direct exports. Also, the effects of these firm-specific characteristics on the use of the programs were found to be done indirectly, in other words, through the awareness of the programs. Therefore, it was concluded that export marketing assistance program would be differentiated and specialized to fit in with exporters' different exporting stages and needs. Also, in order to increase the use of the programs, exporters' awareness and knowledge of the programs have to be increased in advance.