Imagine you own your own business in the United States and want to expand your reach by exporting your product to other markets. One resource the unit mentioned is the International Trade Administration website. You are going to delve into that website’s resources to help you make the decision of where to export!
Go to the International Trade Administration website and take a look at its Learn How to Export page. Click through and read the different materials the page has in its Understand the Export Process section to get a better overview of why companies might choose to export their products.
Then, in the list of links on the left of the page, select Research Foreign Markets, scroll down to the Targeted Market Research and Tools section, and select Research by Country. (Or, should you have trouble navigating the site, here is a direct link to Country Research.) On this page, you will see that the world is separated into five regions: the Western Hemisphere and Canada, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, China, and Asia.
For this assignment, you are going to contrast THREE different country reports. You can choose countries (except Germany and China) from any region in the world, any country that interests you. For each country you choose, look for the following information:
- A market overview, including a summary of challenges and opportunities
- Top three sectors for export, with detail of major items or sub-sectors to consider. (Since this is an imaginary assignment, rather than coming to this research with your product already in mind and ready to export, you will research what product would be best to export to your country of choice. An easier task!)
- How to sell US products in this market
- A recommendation on whether it is a good time (politically, economically) to export to this country
In a word processing document, write your three country reports, separating each country’s report under a clear heading. Each country should have well-developed paragraphs answering each of the four bullet-point requirements (market overview, top export sectors, how to sell US products, and recommendations on whether to export). After you have finished writing your country reports, include a reflection paragraph that highlights anything that surprised you during this research process and what new insights you gained from studying trade process from this export perspective.
