This paper shows that most small and medium sized exporters do not undertake international marketing research. Given this finding the research goes on to consider successful exporters. These firms do engage in such research and their activities are therefore explored in detail. The empirical work shows that the firms make much greater use of in-house rather than external sources of information. The research also shows that successful firms put much greater emphasis on the information required for long term strategic planning. In addition, evidence is presented to suggest that the extent to which information is collected as well as the sources used by these companies is at least partly determined by firm size.