Small and medium-sized companies are used to operate in their local market. They know their customers’ habits and needs and they try to bring products and services that suit them. But SMEs need to grow and develop their activity in order to remain competitive and to increase their market share. For that purpose, a SME can expand its activity to a regional or a national area, but very often competitors are already well settled and it is not so easy to conquest their market shares. The SMEs take a very huge part of the world economy: 60 to 70 percent of the employment in the world is in SMEs. About 25 percent of manufacturing SMEs in the OECD countries are now internationally competitive, and SME contribute between 25 percent and 35 percent of world manufactured exports. Most of the SMEs are in the service sector, but their activities differ depending on whether they are located in a developed country or in a developing state. In developed economies, SMEs specialize in niche markets or become supply partners for large companies, whereas in developing economies, SMEs tend to compete with large companies in the same market, but many of them fail.


            The economic world changes very quickly in the last decades. The creation of common or open markets, the increasing foreign investment, the increasing mobility of capital, technology and management have created great opportunities for SMEs to internationalize and, by the way, to extend their activity and their value chain across borders. But a SME has many challenges to face in order to become a global SME. Before going international, the SME has to prepare itself by making the right decision, analyzing its internal situation and the new market that the company wants to reach. These are the first challenges before thinking about the way the company will become global. After the manager decided to internationalize his business, he has to choose a first foreign market. The analysis of the foreign markets must take account of 4 essential factors: the sales forecast, the production for the market and its generated costs, the receptivity of the market, and its stability. From the elements highlighted in the analysis, the enterprise will work out a strategic plan to establish its products in the foreign markets. The SME will also choose the foreign market according to the importance of its communication networks, and the perceived risks of international trade in the foreign country. After having taken the decision of investing foreign markets, the enterprise has to make an audit of this new country and this new market and then, an internal audit to examine what the SME will have to do to get ready for internationalization.


 


Research Methodology


            The researcher will employ both quantitative and qualitative approaches to data gathering. The researcher will make use of a survey and a focus group. A survey gathers data at a particular point in time with the intention of describing the nature of existing conditions can be compared, or determining the relationship that exist between specific events. Survey research according to Hutchinson (2004) can be defined most simply as a means of gathering information, usually through self-report using questionnaires or interviews (p. 285). The attraction of a survey lie in its appeal to generazability or universality within given parameters, its ability to make statements which are supported by large data banks and its ability to establish the degree of confidence which can be placed in a set of findings (Cohen et al., 2000, p. 171). The popularity of survey research is due in large to its utility on countless research situations. Surveys are used for such diverse purposes as needs assessment, program evaluation, attitude measurement, political opinion polling, and policy analysis, as well as for simple descriptions of behaviors, activities, and population characteristics. The scope of surveys can range from large-scale national surveys to smaller surveys confined to a single neighborhood, classroom, or organization. Another strength is its applicability on situations where direct manipulations of variables is either unfeasible to unethical (Hutchinson, 2004, p. 286). Surveys are best suited for descriptive research. Companies undertake surveys to learn about people’s knowledge, beliefs, preferences, and satisfaction, and to measure these magnitudes in the general population (Kotler 2000).


 



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