Expansion Barriers Faced by SMEs in the UK. A Case Study of CAD Serve LTD

Master's Thesis from the year 2013 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 0.5, , course: Master in Business Administration, language: English, abstract: Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are one of the principal driving forces in economic development. An important issue regarding the exporting is export barriers. Export barriers as those for which a business organization cannot start a new business or expand existing business in a new environment in a foreign country. Export barriers are of two major types¿ namely internal barriers and external barriers.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the Barriers faced by the Small and Medium Enterprise in the UK when they try to expand their business overseas. This study conducted case study and the chosen case company is CAD Serve LTD. It is a very small industrial and architectural software selling company in Newcastle, UK. The researcher used to work in this company and found that this company was facing some problems in expanding its business overseas. Therefore, the researcher decided to conduct a research regarding the expansion barriers faced by SMEs when they want to expand. This study was done through qualitative research method. The primary data was collected taking in-depth semi-structured interview. By applying the content analysis and narrative analysis the findings were analyzed.

The first objective of this study was to identify the external barriers faced by the Small and Medium Enterprise in the UK when they try to expand their business overseas. The second objective was to identify and analyze the internal barriers faced by the Small and Medium Enterprise in the UK when they try to expand their business overseas. From the study the researcher found some internal expansion barriers such as Marketing, Management competence, Lack of skilled labor, R&D ¿ Innovation, Technology, Corporate Social Responsibility, Culture, and Language barriers. The third objective was to suggest solutions for SMEs to face these barriers. In the recommendation the researcher has provided some suggestions to face these barriers.