Impact of Global Financial Crisis on Exporting Strategies in Italian Home Appliances Industry

methodology and in-depth interviews.
To achieve the goal of paper, the following objectives were stated:
 Assessment of general export framework for companies, motivational factors for exporting 
and general export rate.
 Understanding whether and how companies were affected by global turmoil, especially in 
export operations, export strategies.
 How, if so, companies had credit issues in financing export processes and how eventually 
the company solved these issues.
 To see if companies were and still are able to find solutions for the previous issues.
 What, if applied, are the organizational and/or structural changes that the companies had to 
plan and to implement.
 Despite the crisis, whether the company is able to measure and assess its export 
performances.
 To discover, those competitive advantages the company think to have and to use for the next 
years in a way to win competition.
The paper has three integral parts: theory, methodology and research oriented sections. 
Theoretical background from scientific books and articles review on export strategy, international 
management, is used to lay the analytical foundation of the paper. The following aspects is 
discussed in theoretical part too: access to resources, feasibility to use capital for investment and 
growth, credit access to financial institutions, experience and knowledge of the export strategy and 
target market, brand image and brand awareness, communication skills. 
A qualitative method has been chosen to make a whole general understanding picture of the 
current strategies and changes, using in-depth interviews to gather deep and wide information from 
those managers involved in the process of export strategy. An in-depth interview is structured to 
acquire  general understanding of how export managers are managing the current difficult situation 
for their export strategies. The interview is first developed in English language then translated in 
Italian language for Italian managers and back all answers are translated in English, to assure the 
quality of the research. The analytical part will encompass deeper analysis of in-depth interview 
results.
This paper is expected to give a primary insight and become a starting point for further 
studies about latest global financial crisis relationship with exporting strategy changes in various 
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