Foreign Market Servicing Strategies

The nature of world competition is changing: the growing dominance of the global triad (The Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific) is refocusing corporate planning, in many cases, into a three-pronged strategy designed to achieve a global balance between the major markets of the world; the number of multinational companies is increasing as large company groupings are established either through organic growth, mergers and acquisitions or international alliances; small firms, unable ‘to be all things to all people’ are rationalising their businesses and concentrating on core strengths spawning a number of international niche players; the international pool of medium-sized companies is disappearing in many sectors as these firms are ideal targets for takeover by the large firms, or are cut back to become specialist producers. All these changes have important ramifications for foreign market servicing; changes in the nature of international firms are altering the way in which they service their international markets and are giving rise to new trends in market servicing on a global scale.