Prioritizing regions for a food exporter’s own retail sales

The question

A food exporter already sold into a large market on another continent through partners. It wanted to reach retailers there with its own products, and had candidate regions in mind.

Before investing, it wanted evidence on which regions were worth the effort and how each market worked: who imports, who already serves the category, how retailers buy, and how large the audience for an imported product could be.

Our approach

The brief asked about the trade, and we added a survey of shoppers in every region, because shoppers’ appetite shapes how much retailers will take.

Each region was read from three sides, through shoppers, through the value chain from producers to butchers and on the shelf, and the list of regions stayed open to revision as the evidence came in.

Every region was then rated on the same measures, its potential size, how its people buy and know the product, and how open its market is to a newcomer, and grouped into tiers.

What the team came away with

A tiered assessment put every candidate region on the same measures, with the evidence behind each rating and a picture of how products reach the shelf there.

Each region came with its import pathway, the competition already in the category and the considerations for going to market, so the team could judge the effort of entering a region as well as its size.

The target lists were tagged by opportunity and built on a profile of each outlet, with go-to-market guidelines written from how each value chain works, so a sales conversation could start from how that buyer operates.