The Mental Market Research when exporting.

To sell and, especially, to work on the international market scene demands a lot of information. Those who are best informed have the best possibilities to succeed. Most of those who fail were lacking information.

Despite this known fact many well-researched companies still fail. How come?

It is not only the tangible facts that counts - there is normally one key-ingredient  missing.

We source a lot of information about the market including prices, competition, distributor margins  etc. I.e., we collect all the necessary market information. We still  fail.

We have found the  right distributor. We have the facts about the market. Despite this we still  fail.

We blame our distributor for not performing. When asking why they do not sell, they state wrong prices and wrong products even though we know this is not so.
 

What is  wrong?

We did not make The  Mental Research.

Many companies lean  on market information and facts that other people have collected for us and base our strategies and values on these. That means we have all the facts but we  still miss "the feeling". We assume a lot but do not really know.
 

How do!we solve  this?

We need to get an  understanding of the market. How it works, the way to do business etc. So, if we  plan to enter a market, before even collecting too much information, pay a trip to the country and get "the feeling" of the market. Start 18-24 months before the planned start-up and pay a number of visits to the end-users. This will give you a better feeling for the market, the way they do business etc. It will furthermore indicate if your product fits the market, what you need to adapt.  You will also get information about competition, prices as well as suitable distributors. If you can coordinate your trip with an exhibition you can also  walk around and "inhale" the feeling of how products are sold and  exposed.

With all this as a base you can add the "facts" to decide on how to enter the market. In this case you have already made The Mental Adjustment and will not fail in your efforts  due to lack of understanding of the market.

Leif Holmvall
Copyright  Export Pro Inc.
 

Questions and  answers.

We receive a large number of questions from our readers, some asking for very detailed information. Unfortunately, we cannot "afford" to answer them all. But we would like to extend an offer to you. 

If you have  questions that can be of interest to many of our readers and if we are allowed  to publish both question and answer, we will answer you and also include both question and answer as part of the newsletter in the up-coming  issues.

So we welcome your questions.