The purpose of this paper is to identify key export barriers and their impact on performance of Vietnamese seafood firms with their export to the US market. By reviewing the literature and using expert opinions, five factors of the export barriers can be identified, including product, price, distribution, logistics, and promotion. | Tran Huu Ai et. al. / Journal of Economic Development. 22(4), 117-141 117 Export Barriers and Export Performance of Vietnamese Seafood Firms Targeting International Markets TRAN HUU AI Van Hien University – aihuutran@ HO HUY TUU Nha Trang University – tuu_hohuy@ TRAN VAN HAU Van Hien University – hau@ ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Article history: The purpose of this paper is to identify key export barriers and their impact on performance of Vietnamese seafood firms with their export to the US market. By reviewing the literature and using expert opinions, five factors of the export barriers can be identified, including product, price, distribution, logistics, and promotion. A structured questionnaire is used to survey managers of 152 seafood firms, and exploratory factor analysis, used to categorize variables in five barrier dimensions. Then, the development of linear regression aims to determine which barrier has a greater negative effect on export performance. The empirical results suggest that except for promotion, the other barriers have significantly negative impact on export performance. Based on the relative importance of the different marketing barriers, seafood firms should firstly focus on quality improvements to improve their performance. Received: Apr. 9 2015 Received in revised form: Aug. 18 2015 Accepted: Sep. 15 2015 Keywords: Export barriers, export performance, seafood industry, Vietnam. 118 Tran Huu Ai et. al. / Journal of Economic Development. 22(4), 117-141 1. Introduction The structure of the seafood industry has changed significantly in recent years as changes in technology have promoted globalization in the industry. Technological advances in communication and transportation have been reducing transaction costs, improving the ease of access to markets around the world. As a result, international trade in seafood increased first by 25% in the 2000s, followed by a significant global trade boom of 50% growth from
