Traditional industries
It's also possible that traditional industries (such
as the textiles of north west Africa, Turkey or Thailand)
or more recent ones (such as electronics in general in
China) might be tempted to short-circuit the traditional
distribution channels to sell direct to consumers in the
northern hemisphere. The raw materials markets (citrus
fruits, cereals, industrially cultivated crops such as
sugar, cocoa, tea) are extremely speculative markets entirely
controlled by a handful of international trading companies,
who resell their merchandise to industrial buyers in developed
countries. Thanks to Internet, the producers could deal
direct with these industrial buyers and partly re-negotiate
the terms of trading, which at present are extremely unfavourable
for them : their selling prices are low, not only because
of world-wide overproduction, but also because the trading
companies realise exceptionally high profits.
What about your business ?
By creating partnerships with companies in the developing
world, it's possible to envisage joint ventures with these
businesses, to help them reach the western markets : by
combining your knowledge of the European markets with
the reduced production costs from which your partners
benefit, you could increase your market share. If you
find a market to which this might apply, you can choose
not to adopt such an approach, but it's important to watch
your competitors who might also be attracted by this adventure.
Certain developing countries are also well placed to
capture part of the Internet services market : during
the next few years we will see a partial delocalization
of the development and management of electronic commerce
sites (promotion, customer service management). In the
computer industry, many computer developments take place
in India, Poland, Romania. Because these countries already
posses a certain number of computer analysts, as do certain
African countries such as the Ivory Coast, Gabon or Senegal,
they can rapidly create a competitive Internet services
industry.
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