Monday, December 8, 2014

Market Research Lessons from the Czech Republic

I read a good article today in the International Journal of Management Cases, you can find the complete article here http://ijmc.org/IJMC/Vol_16.4.html . If you want to read about the methodology and actual research study more in depth please visit the site. The authors basically surveyed Czech Republic small businesses to determine what did they consider to be barriers to exporting and what are the actual barriers to exporting based on data. They found that many small business believe that the following are their main barriers:

1. Lack of language skills
2. Lack of experience with foreign markets
3. High costs of promotion
4. Lack of public support
5. Lack of information about foreign markets

The findings suggest that the main barrier to exporting is actually:

1. Lack of information or experience in foreign markets.

Those companies that either searched for information about foreign markets or had key employees with experience in foreign markets actually had decent volumes of export sales (as a ratio of total sales). Although the first list is intuitive and i think almost every business owner that has not exported will list the same reasons, I wonder if small business owners in the US have the exact same concerns?

Thoughts.

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