Customizing Your Product Offering for the Global Market
By Carol Webster, Cassel International
Once you’ve decided on a target market for exporting your product, you need to think about what changes you may need to make to your product for it to be successful in an international market.
What’s Your Product Strategy? Can you sell the same product everywhere with the same promotional message? Will you sell the same product with a different promotional strategy? Can you sell an adapted product with the same or a different promotional strategy? Or do you need to develop a completely new product for your export market?
Cultural Influences. Social structure, language, religion, education and tradition in your selected country or region will all have an effect on your product customization. Food tastes and preferences vary tremendously from region to region—when it comes to foods, beverages and scents, there really is no “global culture”!
Economic Influences. Less developed countries tend not to demand high performance attributes. For example, in the U.S. we want our cars to have CD players, air conditioning and power steering; in other countries, just getting from Point A to Point B the most efficient and inexpensive way may be the number one consideration.
Technical Influences. Testing standards may vary from country to country, as may electrical power and other characteristics.