At this point, you have segmented the world market into a two, maybe three, groups:

• Those countries that have potential for your company (your shortlist of countries)
  
• Those countries that might have potential for your company
  
• Those countries that offer no potential for your company
  

Your main segment (i.e. your shortlist) currently comprises between three and five countries. But this has only been a very superficial examination based on initial desk-research you have undertaken. You still need to study the countries, environments, industry sectors and customers within each the selected countries in order to determine whether they indeed offer the potential for your company. At this point, the time has thus come to do more intensive research on each of these shortlisted countries and to narrow the potential target countries/markets down to one or two countries.

Marketing research is about getting down to the specifics. With marketing research your aim is to understand your customer. You will want to know for example:

• Who your potential customers are?
  
• Where do the mostly reside?
  
• What are their demographics?
  
• Are they brand conscious?
  
• Is quality important to them?
  
• What features are they looking for?
  
• Is price important?
  
• What price levels will they buy within?
  
• What service requirements do they expect?
  
• Where do they buy?
  
• What do they use the product for?
  
• How do they use the product?
  
• What is the best media channel to advertise through to reach your customers?
  
• What are the roles of intermediaries?
  
• What sort of after-sales service and guarantees will you need to provide?
  
• Do you need to provide financing?
  
• What is the best means of generating sales?