Development of a framework to assess foreign business markets

The purpose of this master thesis is to provide a framework and advice for entering foreign business markets for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). The researcher conducted a literature study to shed light on this topic and used unstructured discussions to develop the market attractiveness framework. The framework is specifically developed to identify the most attractive business markets based on specifically selected market variables important for Jasca Food Technology. The combination of methodologies and perspectives allowed the researcher to analyze his theoretical framework, market attractiveness framework, and the research questions in a favourable manner. In a world where the Internet and good communications accelerates the globalization, conducting business across borders becomes a competitive advantage. But how should organizations enter the new markets and reach the new costumers? This research has put the emphasis on creating a guiding discussion on how an international expansion process might look like. In this research, the author especially investigated areas that the researcher found important for SMEs during their internationalization process: reasons for international expansion, the choice of market, the entry modes that are used, and barriers and problems that occur in the process.