A key strategy of the Thai government has been to help "grass roots" level, community-based enterprises (CBEs) promote their home-grown agricultural and handicraft products into larger, export-focused, small-medium enterprises (SMEs; Foreign Office, Office of the Prime Minister, 2016). These present-day Thai policies and programs are, however, rooted to a much earlier, 1979 Japanese program called "One Village One Product" (OVOP), which was started in Japan's poorest prefecture (Oita) by Governor Morihiko Hiramatsu which stressed the importance for locals to lessen their dependence on government subsidies as well as help with retaining youth and improving the quality of life (Prayukvong, 2007; Thu, 2013). Governor Hiramatsu's motto was "Think globally, act locally" (Prayukvong, 2007; Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, 2016). Even the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) in 2008 released a report committing itself to rural development and poverty reduction in Africa using a OVOP-type project style (Haraguchi, 2008), whereas other developing nations around the world have adopted Governor Hiramatsu's vision. The emergence of the Asian financial crisis in mid-1997 redirected many Asian governments to strengthen their SMEs (Moha-Asri, 2002), with Thailand adopting Japan's OVOP concept and implementing it in 2001 with a "twist," which in this case reversed the Japanese focus from bottomup initiatives to a Thai government-managed, top-down driven scheme (Thu, 2013). Being relabeled in Thailand as "One Tambon One Product" or OTOP (Kurokawa, 2009), the Thai word "Tambon" is translated into English as "subdistrict," which is the third smallest administrative unit below district and province in Thailand. Numbering 7,256 tambons throughout Thailand (Hörstemeier, 2013), the program exploded after its inception, growing from a little more than US$7 million in 2001 to US$2.24 billion in 2008 (Figure 1), with officials projecting nearly US$3 billion in 2016 (Changsorn, 2015). With the OTOP program's explosive growth after its inception (Figure 1), global confirmation of its importance came as early as 2003 when in the 20-nation Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Ministerial SME Meeting 684911S GOXXX10.

Thailand's One Tambon One Product (OTOP) branded handicraft and food export program in 2016 reached nearly US$3billion, with products coming from approximately 6,000 community-based enterprises (CBE) and small-medium enterprises (SME) countrywide. The OTOP movement is a global program, with communities in China, Malawi, South Africa, Thailand, Laos, and the Philippines. This study examined the influences of perceived quality, competitiveness, trust, and distribution satisfaction on entrepreneurial export performance strategy using the OTOP product brand. Structural equation modeling used LISREL Version 9.1 to conduct a confirmatory factor analysis and test the hypothesized interrelationships on the variables influencing export performance strategy. Results showed that product quality, trust, distribution capability, and competitiveness are important factors influencing export performance strategy. It was also interesting to note that the majority of the 500 entrepreneurs (94.4%) either owned or worked in groups that had 50 or less employees.