Are support providers meeting the export information requirements of ethnic minority‐owned SMEs?

Although the need for many ethnic minority‐owned firms to obtain information to enable them to “break‐out” of their cultural niches and enter mainstream markets has been proposed within the small business literature, it has been widely reported that policy makers and other information providers have a limited understanding of particular operations within certain groups of ethnic minority‐owned firms. This has resulted in an academic argument concerning how best to meet the needs of particular groups of firms in order to reduce the ineffective provision of information and other support activities by these organisations, and the negative perceptions of these bodies from firms within the ethnic communities. In placing this argument into an international context, this study provides empirical evidence concerning the perceived usefulness of sources of export information together with types of data required by groups of Asian and indigenous (white)‐owned small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) in the UK. Findings are primarily based on a large scale sample of UK firms and MANOVA is employed to establish that statistical differences exist between the groups of SMEs. Also reported, are selected findings from a series of in‐depth interviews.