Abstract
The purpose of this research is to understand how New Zealand fashion small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) acquire knowledge during the internationalisation process. A qualitative case study of four firms has been used to explore this research question. The findings of this research suggest that New Zealand SME fashion design firms acquire different forms of knowledge and learning from various sources during the internationalisation process by serendipity and also by design, as will be discussed.
This research contributes to the existing internationalisation literature by extending the Six Markets Model (Payne, Ballantyne & Christopher, 2005) from relationship marketing literature to illustrate how SMEs acquire knowledge during the internationalisation process, and from which sources. This study also identifies the forms of knowledge and sources of knowledge that SME fashion firms need if they are to internationalise successfully.
A limitation of this research is that this study focused on the New Zealand fashion design industry alone. Therefore future research should focus on extending the application of the Six Markets Model on stakeholder relationships in other contexts, such as industries where SMEs comprise a significant proportion of the national economy.