(2017) Barrio Saralegui, Cristina; Martín Martín, Óscar; Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales; Ekonomia eta Enpresa Zientzien Fakultatea
Internationalization is one of the most important and challenging strategic
decisions companies take nowadays. Considering the need of minimizing the potential adverse
consequences of targeting inadequate markets, systematic International Market Selection (IMS)
methods are employed. Nevertheless, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) cannot
afford these sometimes costly and complex models in their internationalization process due to
lack of knowledge, time and resources. Instead, they follow their intuition or other company’s
suggestions. In order to solve the proposed problem, this project provides an application of
the Shift-Share model, a well-known method for analyzing growth rate variations. The selected
study subject is the Spanish wine industry by virtue of its importance internationally and the
predominance of SMEs. The stepwise description, the use of accessible data and the easy-tounderstand
results are some of the key strengths the suggested model holds in its attempt to
reinforce the widespread in use of IMS methods among SMEs.
