The client in this international case is a manufacturer of equipment and

supplies sold to and through supermarkets. While product had been shipped

overseas for years the client wanted to formalize a marketing plan for two

international markets. They used Productive Strategies to insure that their own

inexperience with international marketing did not slow up the process, make it

too expensive, or take them down unproductive paths.

Our work with this client began with the development of an export plan. During

the planning process it became apparent that the greatest growth in this

client's U.S. market occurred in the 1950's when the technology and service offerings

within supermarkets was undergoing a transformation. Part of our strategy was

to select foreign countries where the evolution of the grocery store was

experiencing in the 1990's what occurred in the U.S. market in the 1950's. One

country in South America was selected to represent this segment of the market.

We also selected the United Kingdom as a target market to establish a base of

operations for Europe.

The Productive Strategies' planning process then helped guide the client in

creating a description of the ideal trade partner. This is a process that works

best when the experience of the client is combined with the neutral facilitator

who begins the process with no assumptions of which channels and which type of

trade partner will be optimum.

This client wanted to maintain privacy about their decision to enter select

foreign markets without tipping off competition. By using PSI, the search and

qualification process took place "in the blind" until the timing was

right for revealing the identification of our client.

In our experience "blind" searches are an integral portion of

upgrading international marketing for experienced firms also. Usually

experienced exporters find that some markets outperform others by very large

factors. Sometimes very small population markets outperform very large country

markets. When this occurs there is often great potential for moving into the

underperforming market and upgrading the local sales and marketing effort.

Productive Strategies can do the initial search without disrupting existing

relationships.