STRATEGIES FOR COMPETING IN INTERNATIONAL MARKETS: A GLOBAL INDUSTRY PERSPECTIVE
Why Companies Expand into Foreign Markets
Companies opt to expand outside their domestic market for any of four major reasons: * To gain access to new customers, raw materials, capital, skills and expertise – expanding into foreign firms offers the potential for increased revenues, profits, and long term growth even more so when home markets are mature. * To achieve lower costs and enhance the firm’s competitiveness - Sales volume from one country isn’t enough to fully capture manufacturing economies of scale. * To capitalize on its core competencies - A company with a competitively valuable competency or capability might be able to leverage themselves and make this competency work in a foreign market, too. * To spread its business risk across a wider market base - Companies may move abroad to diversify their risk associated with being in a single economy (e.g. foreign exchange risk, political risk). If the economy in one area falls, the firm might be ok in different economic markets.
In addition to why companies expand into foreign markets, there are four other situational considerations unique to international operations: * Country to Country Cost Variations – Differences in wage rates, workers productivity, inflations rates, energy costs, tax rates, government regulations, etc crate sizeable variations in manufacturing costs from country to country. Plants in some countries have major manufacturing costs advantages because of lower input costs (e.g. labour), relaxed government regulations, or unique natural resources. In such cases, the low costs countries become principal production sites, and most of the output is exported to markets in other parts of the world. Companies with facilities in these locations have competitive advantage. In a globally