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Unit 11 – International Niche Strategies for small to medium enterprises (SME’s)

End of Unit Summary

This unit considered the different strategies available to SME’s. The main
strategies include exporting, niche marketing, e-commerce and being part

of another organisations supply chain. The main difference between an
exporting strategy and an international niche marketing strategy is one of

focusing on customer needs. Exporters mainly offload excess capacity in
the international market, whereas the international niche marketer focuses
on customer needs and has a lot more involvement than the exporter. E-

commerce is also a favourable strategy. This is just concerned with using
technology to build company websites and providing on-line support but

by facilitating the entire business in its e-commerce activities such as ‘born
global’ organisations. The final strategy for SME’s includes being part of
another organisations supply chain. This needs careful management as

SME’s can rely too much on one organisation and this is a risky strategy.
What if the organisation was to find another supplier? It is therefore crucial

to ideally have more than one organisation to supply.

References

• Ansoff, H. (1957) Strategies for diversification, Harvard business
review, 25 (5) p. 113-123

• Burca, D.S., Brown, L. and Fletcher, R. (2004) International
Marketing: An SME Perspective, Prentice Hall, UK

• Doole, I. and Lowe, R. (2008) International Marketing Strategy:
th
Analysis, Development and Implementation, 5 edn, London: South-
Western Cengage Learning

• Hollensen, S. (2001) Global Marketing – A Market-Responsive
Approach, Prentice Hall, London

• Knight, G. A. and Cavusgil, S. (1996) The born global firm: A
challenge to traditional internationalisation theory, Advances in

International Marketing, 8

• Nicholls, A. and Opal, C. (2005) Fairtrade: Market-driven ethical
consumption, Sage