China
Expanding your business in China
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Preparing to Expand Your Business to China
If your product or service is a success at home, overseas expansion should always be considered. The only way of knowing if your business is truly ready - and this can't be overstated enough - is by doing meticulous market research in China. Never underestimate the temperament of a market. Never be so confident to envision a perfect transition that's not how it works. It works through shrewd understanding of new customers: their characteristics, impulses and patterns. Once done, you will then need to build a structured business plan and market entry strategy in China.
Business Plan
Traditionally considered the key to success, a good business plan should never be underestimated. Encompassing your objectives, forecasts and routes, a plan should provide clarity on how you intend to take your business from paper to profit and expand a business to China. A well-structured business plan can often be the difference between success and failure.
Ultimately, you should be able to answer these three questions: What am I trying to achieve? How am I going to achieve it? When am I going to achieve it by?
Here is a quick guide to follow:
- Summary of your business essential if you are showing your plan to potential investors.
- Description of your company; its products or services; why you are selling them; who you are selling them to.
- Marketing & Sales who is going to buy your product or service, and why? How will you get your product or service to them?
- Management and Workforce will you take existing employees or hire people overseas?
- Operational Considerations offices, factories, production facilities, locations, management systems and IT.
- Finance your forecast: this is where your intentions turn into figures.
Companies and experts exist who can help formulate a business plan, taking you step-by-step through methodology and performance management. Blueprinting a plan for UK business is one thing; blueprinting for overseas operations is another. If you don't feel confident drawing one up yourself, get in touch with one of the many international business-planning services out there.
Market Entry Strategy
Essentially a blueprint for the delivery of goods to your market. Market entry is concerned with your customers and your competition: What's already out there? Can you offer competitive products / services / prices? Do you offer an angle your competitors don't?
Here are some basic tips for planning market entry:
- Identifying the best potential customers, locations, sales leads and channels
- Calculating rough sales volumes
- Identifying the best agents and distributors in China
- Studying your competitors their products, services, distribution channels
- Deciding on specific entry points and niches
- Having a good understanding of current and future political and economic climates
- Calculating the initial cost and risk factor
- Acknowledging your business's operational and logistical needs and contextualising them with your candidate country
- Recognising the duties, regulations and other restraints if any to your operations
- Undertake a market test to understand the viability, transferability and profitability of your product(s) or service(s)
- Analyse the market. Will your marketing techniques, product image and its associations be transplantable?
- Evaluate what help and funding may be available
- Market opportunities, risks and environment
- Speak to distributors and producers about pricing and the market: its obstacles and opportunities
Competitor Analysis
Youll want to know what your rival companys are up to. For instance, if they are offering products or services cheaper than you are, it is important to find out why.
The fundamental questions you will want to ask are:
- Who are my competitors?
- What products and / or services do they offer?
- How do they price their products and / or services?
- Do they have more or less customers than you?
- What advantages do they have over you? What advantages do you have over them? And can these be overcome and maintained, respectively?
You may be interested in conducting a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis, too. This will not only juxtapose your business with your competitors, but contextualise it with the market.
How do you find out about your competitions? Well, the three main methods are:
- Find out what they say about themselves, through advertising, literature, websites, press releases, exhibitions, road shows, business accounts, etc.
- Find out what others say about them, through the media, customers, clients, suppliers, reports, market researchers, etc.
- Find out through commissioned market research.
Market Research
Market research deals exclusively with the investigation of a consumer market, segregating it by every means necessary in order to juxtapose it with your product or service.
Market research taps into and analyses the patterns and habits of consumers, giving you an insight into the type of people that buy your product or service, and how frequently they do so.
Invariably, market research categorises people by age, sex, occupation, income, opinions and daily routines. However, the scope for division and categorisation is vast.
Ask yourself:
- Who are my customers?
- What groups and social leaning s to they fall into?
- What is my potential number of customers / market reach?
- Will your customers already be familiar, or used, a competitors products or service?
- What is the basis / criteria that a customer will use to buy your product or service?
- How can you guarantee the customer will return?
- What are the times, places, seasons, moods, etc, they prefer to buy?
China is vast land of business opportunities, embraced capitalism, and potential customers. However, as we have said, it is not without its challenges. Such things as insufficient market data, poor entry strategies, inaccessibility of sales channels and cultural barriers, which negate relationship-building and communication, means that market research is essential. It is possible to acquire much valuable market information from specialist companies, who can also undertake meticulous market analysis in accordance with your product or service. Also, they can offer a blueprint for effective market entry, help you recognise conducive distribution and sales channels, and advice on how to expand your business once established in China.
Typically, you will want to amass information on:
- Chinese Market Research in general: a comprehensive understanding of the market
- Chinese Market Analysis: Is your product or service marketable, and if so, what is its potential?
- Market Expansion in China: augmentation of market share.
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