Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Sunday, August 28, 2011
What does it Take for a Startup to Begin to Exploit the Global Business Environment
The global business environment isn't just the province of the huge multinational corporations; small businesses, if they could start out thinking about and planning for business over multiple regions of the world, could learn early enough what works and what doesn't for business success in more than one country.
Planning to venture into the global business environment, the first thing you need to do would be to look at the part of the world that you believe you should expand into first and gauge the marketplace. You need to do this long before you ever actually venture into it. You want to learn over a period of several months the kinds of competitors you will face in your market segment, and you need to gain information about who does well and who doesn't. Learning all you can about the demographics of the country and the cities you will be in will give you a powerful head start too. You should probably go to the Department of Commerce website right here for in-depth information on everything businessmen need to think about and to be aware of. You'll get the most important press releases and information sheets right away this way. The importance of these should not be overlooked.
Some of the initial research you do about a new foreign market will be about how you communicate your brand to a foreign audience. For instance, Hasbro's Play-Doh certainly sells for what the product can do for children. It's a fun, malleable material, for children to play with. The fact that the brand uses the word Dough and spells in a funny way isn't lost on children either. If you plan to be selling in Mexico, for instance, How do you make the charm of your brand name and your trademark appeal to the people there who don't speak English? This may not really matter if you are an international brand already and your reputation leads you. When you are a new presence though, things like this can really matter.
It doesn't matter what size of business you are; if you want to sell to a foreign audience, you'd better place yourself among them and gauge the market at first hand. Consider the new group dating service called IgNighter. This Boston-based start up dating service that set itself apart by getting friends to go on dates together, found only a modest amount of success in the US. They never expected to make much headway in any other country; but they did, since their website is accessible all over the world. They found that they were getting millions of new members from India. Even if this wasn't a market they were planning to be in, they jumped for the chance and right away opened offices in India so that they could really understand what the Indian dating crowd was like. Travel is an inevitable part of being a part of the global business environment. You have to travel to far-off places if you want to understand those people well enough to be a success there.
Planning to venture into the global business environment, the first thing you need to do would be to look at the part of the world that you believe you should expand into first and gauge the marketplace. You need to do this long before you ever actually venture into it. You want to learn over a period of several months the kinds of competitors you will face in your market segment, and you need to gain information about who does well and who doesn't. Learning all you can about the demographics of the country and the cities you will be in will give you a powerful head start too. You should probably go to the Department of Commerce website right here for in-depth information on everything businessmen need to think about and to be aware of. You'll get the most important press releases and information sheets right away this way. The importance of these should not be overlooked.
Some of the initial research you do about a new foreign market will be about how you communicate your brand to a foreign audience. For instance, Hasbro's Play-Doh certainly sells for what the product can do for children. It's a fun, malleable material, for children to play with. The fact that the brand uses the word Dough and spells in a funny way isn't lost on children either. If you plan to be selling in Mexico, for instance, How do you make the charm of your brand name and your trademark appeal to the people there who don't speak English? This may not really matter if you are an international brand already and your reputation leads you. When you are a new presence though, things like this can really matter.
It doesn't matter what size of business you are; if you want to sell to a foreign audience, you'd better place yourself among them and gauge the market at first hand. Consider the new group dating service called IgNighter. This Boston-based start up dating service that set itself apart by getting friends to go on dates together, found only a modest amount of success in the US. They never expected to make much headway in any other country; but they did, since their website is accessible all over the world. They found that they were getting millions of new members from India. Even if this wasn't a market they were planning to be in, they jumped for the chance and right away opened offices in India so that they could really understand what the Indian dating crowd was like. Travel is an inevitable part of being a part of the global business environment. You have to travel to far-off places if you want to understand those people well enough to be a success there.
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