2.  Once a company has decided on the product, price, place and promotion it needs to make sure that there is enough demand for whatever it is marketing.  Demand involves knowing your Consumers and Competitors

3.  Countries don’t buy products and services, people do.  This involves understanding your ‘target market’ and establishing whether your product or service you provide, will fit in to their needs.  A Canadian business has to be careful not to be ethnocentric (believing that their product or service is culturally suiting to all other cultures) when entering a foreign country.  There are steps you should take to avoid being ethnocentric because it could hurt your business.

4. 1. Step 1: visit the country you want to include in your marketing plan. Dive into their culture by visiting and experiencing their local ways of life, i.e. shops, restaurants, styles, trends, customs and culture (this is the fun part). 2. Step 2: Read about the country on the internet (profiles) usually found on DFAIT Canada. 3. Step 3: Offer your product on the internet to the target nation to see if there is a demand there. Now you can determine whether your product or service has potential, if people in that country want it and have enough money to pay for it.

5.  Some information you must gather at this point is extremely important because it basically answers your questions about the potential demand for what you have to sell.  You will need to locate this information through 2 sources: Primary and Secondary.  Primary sources (data): is what you or your company gathers on its’ own.  Secondary sources (data): is the information you find from other sources about your topic.

6.  And its’ Demographics: characteristics about the population.  So basically, how many people are you dealing with, their average age, the gender differences, birth rate/death rate, education, the family life cycle (stats about types of families like: single parent, divorced, married).

7.  The Thorndike theory of motivation states that people are driven to do things for one of two reasons, either: 1. To avoid pain 2. To gain pleasure For example: It’s cold outside today. -10 degrees. Therefore, I am motivated to buy a winter hat and gloves to stay warm and avoid the pain of freezing. Or, it’s cold outside today so I am going to dress sensibly and fashionably for the occasion and stay warm as well.

8.  This is the money left over from paying all of your necessary living expenses.  The discretionary income is what you spend on non-essential items like: designer clothing, entertainment, accessories.  How much money is left for them to spend on your product if your product is a non-essential product?  Or, is your product a life necessity, however, because it is foreign, it is more expensive?

9.  Just because people have discretionary income, does not mean they will spend it all.  If their was just an economic recession, people would be more reluctant to spend their money on extravagant items or foreign products.  Understanding economic situations in a market helps you understand spending patterns.  You need to make sure that your market feels that your product is worth the price you are asking for.

10.  The competitive market within a target nation is important to a business wanting to sell a product or service there.  Why would a consumer there want to buy your product when there are other products that are either as good as yours or better?  No matter what the competitive situation is, people like to have choices.  So there is always room for another competitor to join the market and compete for some market share.

11. 1. Direct competition: These are the companies that produce similar or identical products or services you produce. Future Shop, Best Buy, Walmart and The Brick all sell televisions. They are in direct competition with each other. 2. Indirect competition: These are companies that produce goods or services that could be a substitute to your product or service. Fast food chains can be substituted for junk food at the corner store or candy can be substituted for chocolate.

12.  One company has the ability to produce a product more cheaply than another company.  Your company has a competitive advantage when it has an edge over companies that make similar products.  This advantage doesn’t last long as other companies strive to compete and make their products just as good and as cheap.  Great example is the cell phone market: Blackberry, Apple, Samsung, Google, HTC, LG, Nokia. How much better are any of these brands from each other?

13. 1. Lower costs of production 2. Lower distribution costs 3. Product differentiation 4. Brand Equity

14.  The theory of economies of scale suggests that the more products you can make in a factory, the cheaper each unit will be when using the same labour and other overhead costs.  If you can lower your costs of production you can become more competitive by lowering your prices to the consumer because you are producing cheaper output.

15.  Companies that have factories in their target countries have lower distribution costs.  Shipping your product there can become expensive.  Establish your shortest routes of distribution by avoiding too many modes of transportation to deliver it.  Try to produce your product right at the source of the resources used to make it  Toyota is an example of a company that has most of its parts to make a car within a 50 km radius.

16.  A difference in flavour, quality, packaging, colour, scent and so on can be the reason that a customer selects one product over another, similar product.  What makes your product different?  Kraves Candy is the only chocolate-covered, graham-cracker cluster candy in the world.

17.  Brand equity is the value of a product’s brand in the market, or the number of consumers that can identify the brand, especially the consumers who name it the top brand in a category.  You can find out if your brand stands out in a consumer survey.  Good brand equity is often the result of good advertising and promotion.