This chapter provides an overview of the pre-internationalization process. The chapter opens with the major motives for firms to internationalize. These were differentiated into proactive and reactive motives. Proactive motives represent internal stimuli to attempt strategy change, based on the firm’s interest in exploiting unique competences or market possibilities. Reactive motives indicate that the firm reacts to pressures or threats in its home market or in foreign markets and adjusts passively to them.

For internationalization to take place someone or something (‘triggers’) inside or outside the firm must initiate it and carry it through. To succeed in global marketing the firm has to overcome export barriers. Some barriers mainly affect the export initiation and others are encountered in the process of exporting.