What are the factors that impede firms’ international expansion? Does a firm with marginal export activity perceive the same export barriers as a company wholly devoted to the export market? This article addresses these and other questions through data collected from a total of 286 exporting and non-exporting small and medium-sized firms in the Spanish wine industry. The results show that decision makers’ perceptions of export barriers–regardless of the type of barrier considered–decrease as the firm moves further in the export development process, even when pre-export stages are taken into account. The main implications of this research work, together with its limitations, are presented in the ‘Discussion and Conclusions’ section of the article.
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