Expansion to foreign markets by Polish trade and mixed enterprises has been developing gradually but it reveals enterprises' weaknesses in business operation in foreign markets. In his article, the author analyses both the very process of creating the strategies for expansion to foreign markets and implementation thereof, choosing for that analysis the examples of major enterprises operating in branch markets: for: foods, clothes, footwear, furniture and other goods for flats and houses, sport and tourist goods, luxury goods as well as fuels and automotive-industry products. The results of analysis point out to the fact that the majority of companies choose the simplest strategy for expansion based on ethnocentric orientation (conveying domestic experience to the markets being close to Poland in geographical and cultural terms); only in few cases, that expansion leads to a poly centric (multi-national), geocentric (global) or transnational orientation.