Factors Affecting Export Intermediaries' Service Offerings: The British Example

Abstract

This study attempts to determine and explain the service-offering behavior of British export intermediaries (EIs). It was empirically confirmed that EIs offer two categories of services: transaction-creating and physical-fulfillment services. It was postulated that the extent to which an EI offers these types of services is influenced by a set of factors that are internally-, product-, market-, supplier-, and buyer-related. Empirical tests on a sample of 135 British EIs established that an EI's exporting role, number of employees, amount of undifferentiated products carried, number of suppliers, and number of countries served all have a direct impact on an EI's service-offering behavior.