Marketing and Sales Strategy for the North African Export Market based on the International Sales Accelerator: A Study for an Italian Chemical Company

Abstract

The following work deals with the prospective expansion of CAP Arreghini S.p.A. in the North-African region. The research question it wants to answer is: Should CAP Arreghini S.p.A. enter the North African market and if yes, what is the most indicated market entry strategy? First, CAP Arreghini S.p.A. will be presented with concern to its products, activities both in the home country and abroad and the internationalization strategy pursued. The description of the company will be accompanied by a SWOT analysis, with the aim to identify the positive and negative aspects of the entity and to foresee the opportunities and threats posed by a new external environment. Second, a case study on the markets of interest will be carried out. After a brief discussion about the term “North Africa”, a preliminary analysis of the region will be performed and followed by one for the considered markets. The subquestions to be answered are Which of the considered markets is worthwhile to be entered? and Can competitive risks and threats be controlled and overcome? This will imply both a market and competitor analysis of the countries object of study, and will lead to the choice of one of them. While the market analysis deals with forecasts of development and growth, the competitive one will draw general considerations on critical success factors of global and local competitors. Third, the last subquestion this work wants to answer is: How should CAP Arreghini S.p.A. implement a proper market entry and penetration strategy? In this section, the tool “International Sales Accelerator” developed by Prof. Gerybadze will be introduced and applied to the case study: thanks to it, an optimal path can be described from a market entry to a rollout phase. The results of the conducted market and competitive analyses, along with the “prescriptions” given by the sales accelerator, will be summarized and presented under the form of recommendations for a successful market entry and subsequent penetration. Information and data employed in this work will come from a variety of sources, especially from the company website and interviews with its representatives, but also from databases and websites dealing with country-specific aspects, varying from purely market-related values to political and cultural issues affecting the business environment being observed.