Ways of Exporting
Exporting is a way to increase sales and grow a company's business. To do it successfully, every business owner has to know trade standards, export requirements, rules of selling and trading all over the world.
The four main notions of a successful export strategy are:
Internal 1: Export readiness assessment of a company (and gap analysis with recommendations how to address the change required)
Internal 2: Export readiness assessment of a product (including benchmarking with similar products that are currently successfully traded on target markets; technical characteristics; packaging and labelling).
External 3: Research of 220 countries and the World’s major trade channels to find target market/s.
External 4: Develop export strategy to enter the selected above target market/s (that will include such considerations like transport, partnership, key distribution channels, pricing, volumes, advertising, etc.).
The company can decide to export directly or indirectly to a foreign country. There exist the following ways of exporting:
1) Direct selling in export strategy
Direct selling involves sales representatives, distributors, or retailers who are located outside the exporter's home country. Direct exports are goods and services that are sold to an independent party outside of the exporter’s home country. Mainly the companies are pushed by core competencies and improving their performance of value chain.
2) Direct selling through distributors
It is considered to be the most popular option to companies, to develop their own international marketing capability. This is achieved by charging personnel from the company to give them greater control over their operations. Direct selling also give the company greater control over the marketing function and the opportunity to earn more profits. In other cases where network of sales representative, the company can transfer them exclusive rights to sell in a particular geographic region.
A distributor in a foreign country is a merchant who purchases the product from the manufacturer and sells them at profit. Distributors usually carry stock inventory and service the product, and in most cases distributes deals with retailers rather than end users.
Evaluating Distributors
The size and capabilities of its sales force.
An analysis of its territory.
Its current product mix.
Its facilities and equipment.
Its marketing polices.
Its customer profit.
Its promotional strategy.
Its policy against the abstract data protocols.
3) Direct selling through foreign retailers and end users
Exporters can also sell directly to foreign retailers. Usually, products are limited to consumer lines; it can also sell to direct end users. A good way to generate such sales is by printing catalogs or attending trade shows.
4) Direct selling over the Internet
Electronic commerce is an important mean to small and big companies all over the world, to trade internationally. We already can see how important E-commerce is for marketing growth among exporters companies in emerging economies, in order to overcome capital and infrastructure barriers.
E-commerce eased engagements, provided faster and cheaper delivery of information, generates quick feedback on new products, improves customer service, accesses a global audience, levels the field of companies, and support electronics data interchange with suppliers and customers.
5) Indirect selling
Indirect exports, is simply selling goods to or through an independent domestic intermediary in their own home county. Then intermediaries export the products to customers foreign markets.
Once a company determines it has exportable products, it must still consider other factors, such as:
- the goals of exporting
- if the exporting goals are consistent with other company goals
- consider demands that exporting will place on the company's key resources (management and personnel, production capacity, and finance)
- evaluate if the expected benefits and costs.
