Increase your international market knowledge

An in-depth knowledge of your foreign markets can benefit your international business in many ways. It can help you:

• Understand your competitors
• Identify markets not fully serviced by your competitors
• Differentiate yourself from your competitors within those markets
• Understand the needs of your customers within those markets
• Develop or adapt products or services to meet these customers’ needs
• Tailor marketing strategies to reach your target customers
• Find the best approach to entering your overseas market

By understanding markets where you sell goods and services, you’ll find it easier to create superior value for your customers abroad. This will boost your global competitive advantage (GCA), and lay the groundwork for international success.

In 2017, EDC surveyed more than 600 Canadian business leaders to determine factors that contribute to their competitiveness internationally. We also wanted to determine key challenges to international business growth:

A little over half (56%) said they would be ready to respond to new opportunities abroad. Of those, 14% said having an in-market sales team and market-specific sales strategy was central to their preparedness.

Overall, having a good understanding of foreign markets boosts a firm’s competitiveness because it allows them to customize marketing, products, services and innovations to each new market.

The Conference Board of Canada defines a global competitive advantage as a firm’s ability to create superior value for its international customers by differentiating itself from its competition. One of the best strategies for export success is to establish an authentic and powerful GCA and have it recognized by actual and potential customers abroad.

At first glance, the simplest approach to establishing a GCA would be to undermine your competitors by charging less for your product or service than they do. Very few Canadian exporters, however, can use low pricing as the central pillar of their GCA. Trying to compete on price alone, in a world of low-wage economies, is likely to be a losing game.

If your company makes unique products or provides specialized expertise, the competitive landscape can be much more inviting. If your offerings can fill a market niche that is unoccupied or under-serviced by your competitors, your firm’s international prospects can be even brighter. The key is to use market intelligence to identify how and why your company is different from your rivals, and discover the niches where you might become the dominant player.

Market intelligence involves collecting raw data and analyzing it to deepen your knowledge of the market, potential customers and the niches where these customers may be found. Your refined market intelligence will also help you examine the competitive environment of your target niche and see how your company fits into it.

The specific types of data you’ll need will depend on your company and its market objectives. In general, though, market intelligence is built on information about the following areas:

• The overall business environment, together with the legal and political factors that may affect how you do business in the country.
• The risk environment, which includes financial risk, (such as not getting paid), economic risk, (such as a local economic downturn), and regulatory risk, (such as currency transfer restrictions).
• The market’s dynamics, such as its size, demand volume, growth rate, consumer trends and profit potential.
• The local infrastructure, such as communications, transportation and storage facilities.
• The demand for the type of product or service you provide, and how you may need to adapt your offerings to appeal to potential customers.

You can obtain market information from a wide range of sources, both online and on the ground, and then use it to develop the market intelligence you need.