International Marketing Assignment

Ques. If you are the marketing manager of an MNC operating in 36

nations, design strategy to enter the African market in order to expand
business for the firm.

Ans.
 Direct Exporting
We would sell directly to the market that we are trying to break into. For
example, if you want to sell to Africa, you get your product into the appropriate
African stores and see how it does.
Contact our people in direct exporting would be our agents and distributors.
These people are the branch between us and the stores. Trying to get a foothold
with a major African store as a foreigner is a lost cause, but with a reliable
agent/distributor (and translation services company) on our side, it’s not.

 Joint Ventures
A JV (joint venture) is a partnership between two companies or people. They
link up and become invested in some sort of business project – the investment is
almost always an equal 50/50, and profits are split accordingly.
Usually, the two companies stay separate from each other, but work together on
one particular venture to try and succeed.

 Franchising the brand

It works like this:
1. Allow business owners to open their own branches of the MNC, aka
franchises
2. The franchisees pay us a certain fee and sometimes a cut of the profits per
year, then they keep the rest
The good thing about franchising is that it’s one of the easier ways to break into
new markets. All we have to do is take our existing, successful business model,
find a franchisee in our target market, build out the franchise, and open our
doors.
The bad thing about franchising is that there is almost always a compromise.

 Partnering up
We have to vet our potential partners thoroughly and make sure that we are
doing business with someone who will actually help usand not slow us down.
But if we can get a good partner, we will be able to get a grip on our new
market much more easily.

 Licensing
Licensing is somewhat similar to piggybacking, except instead of talking to
domestic firms and asking them to carry the product, we talk to foreign firms
and ask them to temporarily own the product.
So for example, if we have a great widget that we feel fits in perfectly with a
company’s inventory in our new market, all we’d have to do is contact that
company and ask.
We consider licensing to be one of the easiest ways to get started, but it’s not
necessarily an “easy process” overall.  We first have to convince the firm that
our product is right for them. Then, we need to convince them that it will sell.
Then, we need to deal with governments and lawyers to iron out all of the legal
aspects of the “sale” of the license.
We don’t lose control of your product – it’s not the same as selling the rights to
our product. We’re merely licensing the rights to our product to a foreign
company for a limited amount of time.

 Piggyback
In order to piggyback, we need to already be selling product to other domestic
companies.
If those domestic companies have international presences, all we have to do is
ask for help.
We would be jumping on the back of your existing business relationship and
trying to make it into international markets that way.

 Just buying a company

Buying a company in a foreign land is by far the easiest way to enter a new
market.
1. We immediately claim market share
2. We have an existing customer base and brand image
3. Even if the government has regulations on the industry for newcomers,
we can bypass them with relative ease (and these rules and regulations
will actually help us by keeping competition low)
4. Governments will still treat us as a local firm in most cases in regards to
licensing and such.