When you want to take a product into an international market, you must have in mind many factors that can determine its success.
In this article, we will share several and important points to you can know and evaluate if it’s profitable to start with exports.
Self-diagnosis
The first thing to do is to adopt a self-criticism attitude (rigorous) to be able to make the most appropriate decisions for the company.
Nothing like knowing your strengths and also the weaknesses, so with a SWOT Analysis or the Balanced Scorecard you can identify the competitive advantages of the product and also the threats in your company.
This will allow you to design market strategies for penetration.
Demand for the product abroad
Through market research, you can analyze the current market situation in the country you want to export and we are not just talking about demographic data but other very valuable ones such as psychographics.
This will allow you to know perfectly the consumer profile in the target market and quantify those willing to buy the product.
Also, this will allow you to know if you have the capacity to produce the quantities demanded or if you have the appropriate material with the quality standards of the competition.
In conclusion, all the data collected will be very useful to know if it’s profitable for the product or if it’s better to avoid great economic and time loss.
Competition
Know who dominates the market and how they have achieved it. What strategies are you using? And, how the exported product could be differentiated from them or be complementary?
It’s also good to analyze the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the competition.
Because let’s be honest, it’s totally logical that all those companies already have strategies to avoid the entry of new competitors.
In addition, the government always has tariff barriers to benefit local production.
So, an analysis of the competition and good self-diagnosis are perfect to know if the product is really prepared to battle against competitors.
Quality Standards
A prerequisite to export is quality. Actually, having an organization with some standards is not that bad, because almost every time it can prevent the failure of companies abroad.
That’s why some companies have to adapt their products to the requirements of the markets, although they often require expensive investments for the equipment and to improve infrastructure.
For this reason, there are international norms of standardization and quality (ISO) and also standards in each country to regulate the entry of new products.
These should be known very well, according to the product, and ignoring them can be fatal for the company.
On ISO standards there is a very important concept: Traceability, related with those pre-established and self-sufficient procedures that allow you knowing the history, location, and trajectory of certain product along the supply chain in a certain moment, through some tools.
Practices of Corporate Social Responsibility
The corporate social responsibility practice is a corporate instrument with a commitment of companies through the systematic application of resources to respect and promote the rights of the people, the growth of society and the care of the environment.
It’s an obligation of the organization motivated for the consequences in their actions.
Some countries are quite demanding with the demands of the corporate social responsibility, with the environment as an example, if the company is in any way against the country’s environmental policies, it won’t be well received and the result is a sure failure.
Consultation with experts
Finally, a factor that you can not ignore is the opinion of experts, they have knowledge and experience to advise you in the export process
Each country (or the majority) has entities specialized in promoting foreign trade, through them you can know the best opportunities in international markets, consumer profile of the principal partners, etc.
In addition, in many cases, these entities provide financing and full support in the first steps to the entrepreneur who want to export. They are very valuable aids that we can not ignore.
All products or services soon to be exported in México must have the following documents:
1. Commercial invoice: Drafted in English if the country of destination is not Spanish-speaking.
2. Packing list: A simple list detailing the shipped conten.
3. Bill of Lading (B / L, AWB, WB): Document certifying that the goods have been received by the carrier.
4. Certificate of origin: Document certifying that the merchandise has been manufactured in a certain country; allows get befits from some tariff in the countries of destination.
5. Insurance policy: Depending on the agreement between the parties, the exporter acquires an insurance policy for the goods in favor of the client.
6. Unique Customs Declaration: Document that indicates the end of the export procedure, and the information contained in the other commercial documents must be included in this document.
UCD requirements:
- Recipient
- A country of destination;
- Objects subject to a single nature of the transaction.
- A single delivery term.
- A single place of delivery.
- A single transaction money.
- Merchandise stored in one place (temporary or local deposit designated by the exporter), except for final export with partial shipments, and goods (with request for direct shipment) in bulk and large volume that require packaging in more than one local, always that these premises are located in the same province where the Customs Intendency or Customs Agency.
en Mérida, Yucatán