Effect of business resources and cluster resources on export performance

The spread of international commerce has added international dimension to all markets by removing the borders. This situation necessitated the enterprises to perform better than their competitors in order to maintain their presents, preserve their positions in the market and to enter new markets. Thereby the importance of globalization and its first step, exportation has increased. The rise of the performance of exportation is necessary for the success of exportation. In this context, it is important to specify the factors that effects on exportation performance. There are studies that show that if the enterprises, which want better performance and gain the profit above average, has some certain sources and skills this will contribute to their exportation performance. In addition, there are studies showing that the clusters in which the enterprises are located, have their own resources and abilities that contribute to the competitiveness and these have a positive effect on the performance of the cluster (Oliver and Gorrigos, 2007) However, new studies which examine the effects of cluster and firm resources on export performance are still needed. In this sense, this thesis aims to determine whether firm and cluster resources have an impact on the export performance of firms operating in the furniture sector. For this purpose, a quantitative study was designed and a survey was applied to 328 companies operating in Ankara (Siteler) and Bursa (İnegöl). The findings were analyzed using SPSS V21 statistical program. According to the findings, it was found that firm and cluster resources had a low positive effect on export performance.