While the internationalization activities of small and medium sized enterprises has been the focus of extensive scholarly effort, a great deal of this work has been based on concepts that were theorized in a vastly different business environment than exists today.

As the barriers to communication between marketing professionals and relevant actors in the field in foreign markets continue to diminish through multidirectional engagement via Internet mediated/online communities, the implications on involvement in these social networks presents itself as a thoroughly viable means by which to gain valuable market intelligence.

Various theories have shown how strength of ties, utilization, and structural holes, act as important constructs attendant to network theory, and those concepts underpin an understanding in this work of the ways that social networks born of online communties can play a valuable role in the market orientation and intelligence of modern firms. By presenting a market relevant, qualitative, and personal account of market factors and concerns, online networks may present a means for smaller and less finaincially secure firms to conduct preliminary market research in far flung markets for a fraction of the costs at which it has been previously available.

This paper seeks to investigate the role that online communities can play in market research and intelligence, and in doing so creates a merged theoretical framework by which to describe and understand the process.