Exportlink exporting tips on market research from Business Gateway International Aberdeen City and Shire

BGI Manager Colin Crabbe is a highly experienced exporter with over two decades of first-hand familiarity in diverse markets in Africa, the Middle East and the Far East.

Drawing on his own experiences, Colin is a regular contributor to the exportlink website with practical articles to assist the less-experienced exporter.  Here are some of his commonsense notes on the topic of export market research – other exporting tips can be found at Archived Tips.

Export market research

“Elsewhere on this site you can read in some depth about the excellent Export Marketing Research Scheme (EMRS) which is operated by the British Chambers of Commerce on behalf of UK Trade & Investment.

EMRS is a first-class scheme and allows you, or appointed researchers, to get face-to-face on a market visit with sales prospects in a new overseas territory.  But I believe EMRS is at its most potent towards the end of your export market research, when you are nearly market-ready, so I would like to highlight two other research resources which I can thoroughly recommend to aspiring exporters.

The BG Information Centre

The first is actually within Business Gateway's own Information Centre here in Aberdeen, where our trained researchers can access their substantial international databases – especially for European markets – to give you good sound basic desktop research into the overseas markets which you are looking at.  This is also particularly cost-effective since our research services are free of charge!

This is often a doubly valuable first step since our researchers are also very pleased to give advice and tips on how you can undertake further market research using your own resources.  Remember market research is very much an ongoing, “live” discipline – many markets these days are subject to trends and changes, and you have to make sure that the market knowledge which underpins your activities is kept up-to-date.

Once you have completed your desk research, it may be too early to start thinking about getting face-to-face with new prospects, in which case I would recommend you now consider using another excellent UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) research resource – the Overseas Market Introduction Service (OMIS).

Using OMIS

OMIS mainly operates through UKTI’s in-market experts and the huge network of commercial officers attached to UK embassies in many of the world’s markets, so you are dealing with people who have a very strong handle on the local market.

There are five different levels of service provided through OMIS, ranging from £200 for something like updating a local market report through to £1700 for a thorough market analysis, including appointments made on your behalf to meet selected contacts at major trade fairs.

This service represents excellent value for money, especially since you may well end up with prime sales contacts (either customers, agents or distributors) who are already thoroughly warmed-up to receive your business proposal.

If you are interested in using OMIS, I suggest you contact BGI (details below) and we will be pleased to get Scottish Development International to help you draw up a brief – this is one of the trickier parts of the job and calls for some expertise.

The other thing to bear in mind is that OMIS is already hugely popular in prime markets like Houston, where I know the local commercial officers are currently up to their eyes with enquiries.  So don’t expect to get your OMIS research report by return of post – factor in a sensible period to enable the work to be done thoroughly.

But the main point to remember is that, between BG Information Centre, OMIS and EMRS, you really have all the research resources you need to know enough to break into a new overseas market.”

For more information on international market research support, please contact BGI International Trade Adviser Karen Irving on T: 01224 252208, E: Karen.irving@scotent.co.uk

To contact the BG Information Centre directly, contact T: 0845 609 6611, E: bg-grampian@scotent.co.uk.