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STEP ONE: ASSESSING GLOBAL MARKETS AND THEIR GROWTH

9 November, 2015 - 12:44

There are essentially two ways of acquiring data on the global market. The first-the one favored by most U.S. managers-is to focus on U.S. exports of a product. The second-favored by Japanese managers-is to focus on United Nations or OECD data on world exports, imports, and re-exports.

Exhibit : XIS Product Report illustrates the kinds of information that are useful in Phase A of the marketing process. The exhibit shows a report generated by the Small Business Administration's Export Information System (XIS). The report provides three sets of data on imports of a particular product. The upper portion of the report gives the top twenty-five importers of the product; each importer's growth/ decline pattern, expressed as a deviation from a base index ( 100); the major exporter to each importing country; the size of the global market; and total U.S. exports of the product. The middle section of the report presents data on the ten markets in which the United States has the highest share. The percentages of each market held by the United States and by its major competitors are given for the past five years. The bottom section of the report provides similar data on the markets in which the dollar value of U.S. sales is greatest. The XIS system contains information on over 2,500 products and 160 countries.