The Internationalization of Latin-American Smes and Its Obstacles: The Application of the three Fences Model
The processes of internationalization are complex: between the company and the target market there are barriers widely discussed in the literature on internationalization. The article proposes a new scheme of barrier analysis that integrates the company, the market of origin and the market of destination. The research is based on 225 interviews with Latin American SMEs and proposes the “three fences model”. This contributes to a fine understanding of the barriers faced by SMEs in their internationalization processes, allows a comprehensive diagnosis of their fragilities and facilitates the design of corrective strategies at the three levels involved.