Exporter-importer business relationships: Past empirical research and future directions

Abstract

We present a systematic and comprehensive review of the extant empirical literature on exporter-importer business relationships during the period 1975–2017. The review covers 196 articles published in academic journals, which were content-analyzed with their theoretical background, research design, scope of research, sampling/data collection methods, data analysis, and thematic areas covered. Our findings reveal that this line of research is characterized by: (a) a sound theoretical foundation, the most frequent theories being the behavioral paradigm, transaction cost economics, and relational exchange theory

(b) heavy emphasis on formalized, statistical, cross-sectional, and causal research designs

(c) focus on single-country studies, conducted mainly in Europe, Asia, and North America

(d) a tendency to employ probabilistic samples, of a relatively large size

(e) an adoption of relatively sophisticated methods to purify and analyze data collected

and (f) an emphasis on topics relating to behavioral and structural relational dimensions, followed by external and internal influences. Guidelines for researchers focusing on exporter-importer relationships are provided, as well as suggestions for potential new research topics.