4 Phases of International Marketing Involvement

When company has decide to involve in international marketing, they have to do study and analysis of market potential in the country they interested to do business so that they can decide the level of involvement they would like to commit. There are 4 phases of international marketing involvement; which are no direct foreign marketing, infrequent foreign marketing, regular foreign market and international marketing.

In no direct foreign marketing stage, the company may not actively involve in international marketing. But yet there are still have possibility of the product to sell in oversea through the distributor or wholesaler without the knowledge of the producer. The next stage is infrequent foreign marketing, where company may involve in the international marketing infrequently depending when there are temporary surplus of the production. Company has no intention to maintain the international demand and only focus in domestic demand. When only there are surplus of product after distributing the domestic market then only the company would sell to oversea market. The next level is regular marketing. In this stage, the company has the intention to do international marketing and has permanent production capacity allocate to international demand. Company may has own sales subsidiaries in the foreign market. However the sales of the company still depend to the domestic market and the sales in foreign market is just a bonus for the company. For example, Proton the Malaysia national carmaker also setting up sales subsidiaries in Europe market and Proton major sales are still come from domestic market and also Proton production plant are only in Malaysia. The final level is international marketing, where company fully involved and committed in the international market. The company not only setting up sales subsidiaries but the production plant in the foreign country. For example Toyota the Japan carmaker not only has production plant in Japan but they also build