Exploding Your Small Business into the International Marketplace

From the fire into the frying pan is one way to describe entrepreneurs that start out engaging in international marketing. According to Zhou et. al. (2012) such entrepreneurs often excel quickly past their competitors as the organization maintains pliability and learning to match market needs. Despite the overall risks of marking internationally from the beginning, organizations are more likely to grow quickly and obtain greater cash flow. 

Organizations must learn to be competitive. Starts up businesses have a significant learning curve at first but begins to wane over time as they gain skills. When they are connected quickly to the international markets there is more opportunity to find resources that requires greater learning activity. Doing so before the small company becomes structured helps to ensure its pliability in finding new revenue streams and maintains its entrepreneurial activities.

To be successful such firms will need to exploit both foreign market knowledge and networks to create the right kind of internationalization. It primarily impacts the perceptions of decision-makers that will need to focus on finding relevant information and using connections with larger international firms to create market opportunities. It changes the perception from the beginning of an organizations life to a wider world. 

According to learning theory, “what an organization knows at its birth will determine what it searches for, what it experiences, and how it interprets what it encounters” (Huber, 1991, p. 91). It is an issue of perspective gaining and creating the right vantage points to obtain information. This information can then be used to create new ways of solving problems. 

International marketing requires a wider perceptual field. Business must ensure they understand the varying niche markets around the globe, know which ones meet their needs, and understand how to provide communication to customers within that market. The more they understand how to match their marketing to the global perspective the less risk of financial failure they face over time. 

Moving beyond this report we can see that the Internet and the interconnectivity of various groups of people affords opportunities not seen a few decades ago. Products can be marketed, shipped and sold around the globe with less effort than in the past. The Internet is affording opportunities to not only get out the message about products but also to integrate more information through search engines, services, and analysis. Where businesses were once limited to local companies they can now explode onto the international market. 

Zhou, L. et. al. (2012). The effects of early internationalization on performance outcomes in young international ventures: the mediating role of marketing capabilities. Journal of International Marketing, 20 (4). 

Huber, George P. (1991) Organizational Learning: The Contributing Processes and Literatures. Organization Science, 2 (1), 88-115.