Today we live in a globalized world that has forced companies to leave their comfort zone to start marketing their products in other countries. When we face new markets and new competitors, it is necessary to establish a good international strategy and a competitive strategy that allow us to achieve success and push our business towards new horizons. In this post we are going to analyze the main types of international and competitive strategy necessary for companies to implement themselves in other countries through a plan that clearly defines our objectives.
What is international strategy?
An international business strategy is a series of actions that the company carries out to define a production and/or commercialization plan for its products in other countries of the world. It is important that companies make the effort of a deep and meticulous search for their own competitive advantages in order to generate and implement an adequate and winning strategic plan.
Next we will see which are the most used international strategies :
Transnational Strategy
There is talk of transnational strategy when we have a company with a parent company and it later expands to other countries where it implements other offices. These satellites of the parent company are totally independent, in fact, to achieve their competitive advantage , they carry out their own research, development, marketing and production activities. Some transnational companies are: Apple, Samsung, General Electric, Gilette.
Multinational Strategy
In the case of a multinational strategy, we have a company created and legally registered in a country of origin, but with different subsidiaries in other countries. In this case we may have production facilities in different countries, but all the strategic decisions and important decision-making all come from the headquarters.
Global Strategy
This type of strategy is implemented by companies that consider each country where they act as a segment of the global market. Therefore, the competitive advantage is based on being able to produce a more standard product to achieve greater efficiency and adapting at the same time to each market. In a global strategy, it is necessary to have a high level of coordination and centralization of decision-making in order to take full advantage of the advantages offered by a product of this type.
Achieve international success through a good competitive strategy
When we face a challenge such as launching into a new market, it is important to do analysis and research work in order to develop a competitive advantage that allows us to stand out from other competitors. The center of our strategy has to focus on how we sell and present our product , with the aim of providing a value proposition to our final consumers.
There are different types of competitive strategy that have different objectives:
Differential competitive strategy
The objective in this case is to create a product/service that stands out from the rest of the competitors. This type of competitive advantage can come from elements such as: brand image, product, location and any other feature that adds value to the consumer.
comparative competitive strategy
In this case, the main objective is to offer the product/service in the best possible way, to lead the customer to decide on our brand over those of other competitors.
Cost leader
It is a strategy that, without sacrificing quality , manages to obtain the final product at a lower cost and thus be able to offer it at a more affordable cost.
Segmentation
Sometimes when marketing a product that has a high level of competition, it is better to target only a small portion of the market. In this case, a specific market segment is selected and a highly specific and specialized product is developed. This type of competitive strategy is very typical among small and medium-sized companies that cannot compete directly against the larger ones.
Conclusion
This is just a small summary that shows the different and important international strategies that we have to plan when it comes to achieving our objectives towards new markets.
At Redflexión Consultores we carry out an in-depth analysis of the characteristics and all the areas of opportunity that can help your brand stand out in international markets. For twenty years we have been helping companies with product analysis and research to develop a value proposition that can increase their chances of success in an increasingly competitive and global market like the one we find ourselves in.
