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Country Analysis. Marketing Resarch

Section 4: Country Analysis Guide

Instructions:

· Use this as a discussion guide. Do not use it is Q & A form. Your discussion should be in paragraph format. Feel free to add discussions not suggested here and if it is not applicable you can also skip some questions. However, all sections should be discussed somehow.

· Use as much data as you can and don’t forget to cite properly.

· Make sure you keep all numbered headings.

· Please note that you need a separate section for each country you discuss here. In this case the two countries are the ones you selected based on your marking scheme. In other words, you discuss first country A and cover all sections from 4.1 to 4.7 and then country B again 4.1 to 4.7

Section

4.1

Country Profile

4.1.1 Country Overview: Give an overview of the country’s geography, politics, economy and social.

· General information about the country, official name, geography, size, political system, history, etc,

· Use the general descriptions (population) Population can be used to show market potential (use both total, change overtime)

· Use GDP data for 5-10 years to discuss trends.

· Add any information to give general background about the country.

4.1.2 International business/ trade: Discuss the degree of integration of the economy in the world market place.

· Volume of export and import

· Growth of export and import (Use 5-10 years data),

· Information about any major happenings or policies in international trade such as free trade agreements, WTO membership, tariff revisions, and policy shift towards foreign trade, etc.

4.2

Political Characteristics and Governance: Discuss the political condition and assess the political risk involved in doing business in the country

4.2.1 Political Conditions

· The type of governments (democratic or not, the type of constitution)

· How stable is it? (use stability indicators)

· Who are the major parties, who is governing, how does political representation look like (seats)

· What are the fundamental policies of the ruling party

4.2.2 Government’s international trade and investment policy

· Is the country considered open (use indicators such as openness indicators)?

· Discussion of foreign investment climate such as incentives or lack of incentives,

· Is there any danger of expropriation? (See if there is history of expropriation, if there is outstanding claims)

· Is the country a signatory to international agreements on intellectual property (WIPO), WTO, etc?

· Is the country a member of trading blocks (or free trade agreements?

4.2.3 Regulatory Barriers

· Are there legal or political barriers to exporting into the target country?

· Are there restrictions imposed by Source country to export (export ban, sanctions, for example)?

· How restrictive is the target market? Discuss the tariff levels or quota levels (if applicable)?

· What environmental, health, safety or technical standards might apply to the proposed venture?

· Are there specific measurement, packaging and labelling requirements?

· Are there other non-tariff measures used in the country?

· Are there sufficient intellectual property laws and are they enforced?

4.3

Physical and Commercial Infrastructure: Review the state, quality, quantity, cost of overall physical infrastructure with emphasis on the ones that are vital to your business.

4.3.1 Physical infrastructure

· What is the extent and sophistication of telecommunications? (Data on phones, internet access, roads, airports, ports, and others that are vital to your business)

· Transport, warehousing and other necessary stuff.

· Distance between home and target market and its impact.

· Geographic and climatic conditions

· Discuss quality and try to find cost figures

4.3.2 Business Operating Environment

· Inflation, Interest rates and implications

· Tariff levels (General and specific to your venture)

· Also research custom and other regulations such as health, safety, licensing or permit

· Which taxation applies? (Is there Goods and service tax or VAT, what is the tax level overall and specific to your venture?

· Does the country have tax treaty with the source country?

· What is the currency, its convertibility? Are there foreign exchange restrictions?

· Talk about risks: Currency risk and payment risk

· Business services required for your venture and their availability in the target market?

· Banking sector: How many banks? Are private banks active? Their efficiency? Do they facilitate international transaction?

· Are there any incentives for foreign investors?

· Are there foreign investment restrictions, e.g. limits to profit repatriation?

4.4

Source country experience in the target country: Discuss source country’s presence or absence and what does it mean to doing business in that country

· Trade between source country and the target market (volume, composition, trend)

· What are the most traded items between the two countries?

· Are there source country companies including banks doing business in the country?

· Is there source country diplomatic or trade representation?

4.5

Product/Service fit: Discuss how your product/service meets the needs, requirements, characteristics of your customer and destination country.

· What factors (values, culture, religion, and attitude) affect the demand for your product/services?

· Given the characteristics of the target market, what modifications would help the product in matching local preferences?

· Is the price appropriate? Are modifications required to make it more affordable?

· Is the product matched to the sophistication of the target market? Any modification required? (e.g. simplifying operation)

· If so, what is the degree of modification? (Totally different product, major or minor modification? Which specific part of your product/service will be modified? What are the changes to be made: Should product feature be changed? (e.g. appearance), Should different materials be used? Should measurements be changed? (e.g. metric or U.S. standard) or should technical specifications be changed? (e.g. voltage)

· Does language play a role in modification in product/service features, labelling, instructions, delivery or after-sales service?

· Do technical specifications in the target market require modifications to the design, standards, contents or functioning of the product?

· Are there environmental considerations that would require modifications (e.g. emissions, reusability, disposability)

· Is the quality embedded in the product appropriate for the standards of the target market?

· Is the technology used appropriate?

· Can it be readily maintained in the target market?

· Can IP embedded in the product be protected?

· Does the technology used challenge any patents in the target market?

· Is the product/technology at its early stage to justify investment in future modification?

· Has the product/technology run its useful life cycle? Should it be replaced with a new product/technology?

4.6

Target Market Characteristics: Describe your customers and their characteristics

· What is the current market for the product or service in the target market? (4- 10 years data)

· What is the projection or the future trend?

· What is going to be projected market size and share for your product/service? Size and share for your product/service?

· Are similar products being produced locally? Are similar products being imported?

· Who are your target customers? Describe them in terms of demographic data: Age, income, location, sex, etc.

· Psychographics: Find information about their lifestyle. Information about psychographics would be helpful. Their spending behaviour is very important. What is the structure of and priorities of their spending.

· Are similar products/services being sold or offered in the target market?

· Talk about your segmentation strategy

· How would you differentiate your offering?

· Are there ways in which the company can modify its products/services in order to differentiate them from others?

4.7

Competition and competitive barriers: Identify and discuss the competition and the competitive nature of the market as well as the competitive barriers in the market.

· How do you describe the market (purely competitive, dominated by government or by few companies, etc.?)

· What products/services compete with yours (directly and indirectly)?

· Are these competing products/services local or import?

· Which companies are direct competitors in the target market?

· Choose the main ones and discuss their size, market share, resources, and strategies.

· How do you plan to deal with the competition? Discuss your differentiation strategy.