Select a company and explain strategy that might use to expand its operations or products into new, foreign market outside the company’s home country.

Guidelines: Select one European, Asia-Pacific, or United States company for a thorough investigation. You will conduct a comprehensive analysis of the company’s current strategic position and develop a strategic plan for expanding the company and/or a company’s product into a new, foreign market outside the company’s home country. The company and/or the identified product cannot already be present in the foreign market.

Example:

Country: United States of America

Company: Wal-Mart

Product: Retail stores

Foreign Market: Australia

Wal-Mart is the largest retail company in the entire world. It is the biggest company in the United States with many retail stores and hyper supermarkets that sell their products in the huge franchise. Most Americans have had the experience of shopping at Wal-Mart as they have set up shop in most of the states in the US. Wal-Mart is favorable for its many stores and cheap prices as compared to other stores (Huang, Kuo & Lu, 2014). Wal-Mart, however, has not expanded into many other countries except Mexico, Canada and some other countries that are close by. Australia is filled with small retail stores and Costco is the only huge retail store that has opened in Australia. It would be a great idea for Wal-Mart to expand into Australia due to a number of reasons. Australia already has a ready market and due to the large population that is found in Australia, Wal-Mart would be successful in the market. The best corporate market strategy that has been used by Wal-Mart is the low prices strategy (Brennan & Lorman, 2009). Most of the products that are offered by Wal-Mart are sold at a price that is lower than the price of the same commodity in other stores. The products are also of a very good quality that competes favorably to the quality of the same commodity in other stores. Wal-Mart should also focus on the difference in culture when expanding into the Australian market where they should consider the strategies that have proved favorable and accepting to people in Australia. There have been some difficulties in the expansion by Wal-Mart mostly due to the huge capital that is required to enter the Australian market. This is a problem because there is an already existing huge retail store in Australia that would offer competition to Wal-Mart. The strategies that Wal-Mart can use therefore include either acquiring an existing competitor, form an alliance with an already existing competitor or start using greenfield operations which they can choose to either do alone or form partnerships with other existing players (Jiang, Holburn & Bearnish, 2016). By doing this, Wal-Mart will achieve huge success in the Australian market.

References:
Brennan, D. P., & Lorman, L. (2009). An assessment of Wal-Mart’s global expansion strategy in the light of its domestic strategy. European Retail Research. Gabler Verlag. 125-151
Huang, K, L. Kuo, C, & Lu, M. (2014). Wholesale prices debate vs capacity expansion: the optimal strategy for seasonal products in a supply chain. European journal of operational research. 234(1), 77-85
Jiang, G, F, Holburn, G. L & Bearnish, P. W. (2016). The spatial structure of foreign subsidiaries and expansion strategy. Journal of Worl Business. 51(3), 438-450