Internationalization process of SMES and an application in Adana region

The purpose of this study is to examine the internationalization process of smalland medium sized firms (SMEs) and determining the behaviors of Turkish SMEs withthe evaluation of the past studies made about this topic.In this context, after defining the importance and the purpose of this study inintroduction, the definitions of SMEs and internationalization has been evaluated in thefirst part and the advantages and disadvantages of SMEs are defined according to thethe past studies. In the second part of the study, the models regarding theinternationalization process of SMEs are evaluated and the most important twointernationalization processes, called Uppsala model and Born-Global model areexamined in details. In the last part of the study, a research on the internationalizationprocess of SMEs was performed to analyze the behaviors and the models of TurkishSMEs in their internationalization process. In this framework, the manufacturer SMEslocated at Adana Organized Industry Zone were seleceted as a study area. Thequestionnaires are spread to 98 SMEs and 37 of them were replied to this study. Basedon the data derived from the answers of these SMEs, the descriptive analysis, andANOVA analysis were done. According to the results of this analysis, very importantpoints regarding the internationalization process of Turkish SMEs are well understood.Keywords: Internationalization, Export, SME, Uppsala Model, Born-GlobalModel