Adapting products for international markets

During the internationalization process of a product or service, it’s important to know if the product needs to be adapt to an specific market, knowing the different aspects that are involve in this such as culture, customer expectations, weather, competition, in order to see if the market will react in a positive way to the product you are willing to sell in the foreign country.

Products need to be differentiated from competition; this could be accomplished by their composition, origin or tangibles characteristics like packaging or quality. The first aspect that need to be take into account when the company decide to internationalize the product by reaching new markets  refers to the adaptation of the product. There are four options that companies have at the moment they are willing to gain new markets, the first is to sell the product the same way it’s in the international market, second modify the product for each country or region, third design new products for each market and fourth, incorporate all the differences into the design of the product and put it into the global market.

 The real dilemma in this process is whether standardize or adapt the marketing strategy of the product in order to reach new markets. The benefits of standardize the product are saves in the cost of production and marketing also economies of scale. But in the other hand, adapting the product to the market will make them take into account other aspect that are not mentioned before such as governmental regulations, this can make a product be adapts in the new market depending the country, different behavior patterns of consumption or local competition.

At the moment to decide how the product will be sell or commercialize in the new market, companies need to take into account three factors  such as the market that the product will be focus on, the product and the characteristics and the characteristics of the company.  This aspects sometimes are not take into account due to the extra cost that are generated to the company in order to adapt the product, but in many cases, companies loose huge amount of money trying to gain new market without realizing, that investing the money adapting the product could be cheaper than loose the money trying to make people buy the product they do not like.

Every product is made to fit the prevailing conditions of the market. Those conditions are related to legal, economic or weather standards of the market. Therefore it’s important to analyze carefully the market environment to see how these affects positively or negatively the adaptation of the product. This conditions are governmental regulations, non tariff barriers; characteristics, preferences and expectation of the customers, culture, economic development, competitive offers, and weather and geography.

Also it’s important to analyze the characteristic of the product where we have the components of the product, brand, packaging, presentation and uses of the product.

Market Environment

Governmental regulations are commonly the most rigorous requirements for a product to reach new markets, most of them are used to protect national industries. In order to success into this process, it’s important to realize that regulations changes as fast as new products come to the market.

Non Tarrif barriers include product standards, test procedures and bureaucratic paper work. These barriers require adjustment of the external elements of the product, such as the use of the language in the label.

Characteristics, preferences and expectation of the customers dictates the changes that are need to adapt the product to fit in the market, this decision could be made by knowing the consumption behavior, tastes, attitudes and tradition of the country or region. These variables affect directly the success or the failure of the introduction of the product in the new market.

Culture reflects the social heritage, political and religious views, and it’s the hardest variable to try to change it. In these cases companies most adapt product to this instead of trying to change minds and behaviors. The language plays a different role in the culture but has the same importance as the other ones. If the name or the message the product want to transfer to the customer is not well translate it, most probably will make it a failure product.

The economic development of the market has a straight influence in the adaptation process due to the importance of the purchasing power of the customers. As the economy of the target country goes, the customer will have more money to expend, demand well and more refined version of them.

Other variables as competitive offers, weather and geography are important to know because it affect how the customer behave, an example of this is how the people who live near the shore behave than the people who leaves in the central part of the country.

Characteristics of the product

Every product offers different characteristics that are perceive by the customer. Depending on the characteristics the product could be a good candidate for standardization or impossible to standardize.  The components of the product are needed to be revised to make sure the target country has no restrictions for those ones.  The brands transmit the image of the product or company are also needed to be revised to make sure that in the target market its transmit the same or better experience that in the natural market, this goes hand by hand with the packaging and presentation of the product.

In order to make a success internationalization process, it’s important to make sure the product fits in the new market by understanding, knowing, and constantly revising the variables that affect it direct or indirectly to make sure the adaptation is the right one.