Internet to Do Foreign Market

¶ … Internet to do foreign market research

Compare the advantages and disadvantages of using the Internet for doing foreign market research. How will you apply this information in your research?

With much being written about how the Internet is a major contributing factor to the globalization of cultures and the development of entirely new value chains, it is increasingly being relied on as a platform for completing research of foreign markets. The advantages of using the Internet for foreign market research are its relative low cost, the immediate availability of economic and sociological statistics (including demographics) in nations that publish this data, and industry sector profiles available both through the U.S. Department of Commerce's freely available databases in addition to specific countries' ministries of finance as well. Increasingly purchasing information is available as well on easily tracked larger purchases including capital equipment items as well (Axinn, Deeter-Schmelz, Straley, Zavoral, 2006). The disadvantages of using the Internet for foreign market research is that the validity of the research is not easily verified, the research published by foreign governments is often over-stated to appear more competitive than they are in specific industries, certain governments look at their demographic data as confidential, and there are also policies that are ethnocentric and at times protectionist as well (Lipner, 2007). There are also inconsistencies across countries in how they measure their industries, production levels, and development milestones of their industries as well. What makes using the Internet for researching foreign markets most difficult is that while nations are gradually realizing they are needing to compete globally, there is still a highly protectionist philosophy to demographic and economic data in key, emerging growth industries. Often there are multiple sources of information on a foreign market, both from the Internet and also published by third party research providers, needed to get a true measure of the market opportunities in foreign markets.