Christianjoint venture marketing
If you’re a business owner or entrepreneur who wants to find a way to increase sales and enter new business arenas, a joint venture is a great way to break into new horizons. An entrepreneur with savvy business acumen can research, find, and negotiate a JV deal with another business that can help achieve new business goals. And a few lessons from the world’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart, may be helpful in finding creative JVs that will help expand your business.
How Wal-Mart Entered India with a JV
In 2009, Wal-Mart started doing business in India for the first time. However, the Indian Wal-Mart is not the typical Wal-Mart retail superstores you see in most every small, medium, and large city in America. Rather, the retail giant formed a joint venture in 2006 with Bharti Enterprises, Inc., one of India’s leading business groups.
For the last three years, they have found a way to do business in India that complies with the strict government foreign-business investment restrictions and does not compete with domestic retailers. Rather than be an everyday retail store, the new Indian Wal-Mart is a wholesale business catering to the specific needs of vegetable vendors, hospitals, restaurants, and hotels, operating under the name BestPrice Modern Wholesale.
Wal-Mart is a world leader in consumer marketing and product logistics. Even you can take lessons from Wal-Mart’s India presence. Here’s how:
Find The Right JV Partner
First, Wal-Mart had to find a retail leader in India with a good reputation. Through their combined efforts, Wal-Mart and Bharti Enterprises were able to form a working business entity.
Your efforts to find the best JV partner with a high reputation for quality and service are vital. If your goal is to enter new markets and larger market segments, a JV with another reputable business can aid your efforts to succeed quickly and more efficiently.
Jostle Your Paradigm
Wal-Mart is known worldwide for its large retail stores with low prices on popular consumer products. However, that paradigm would not work in India due to strict government non-competing laws on foreign businesses. Therefore, a new wholesale business paradigm was designed to help Wal-Mart play into the non-retail sector of India’s business economy.
Your JV entity and structure may need to change the way it normally does business. If you’re a retailer, you may need to work wholesale only. If you provide consumer services, you may need to change to a business-to-business format for your JV to succeed. Stay open to business paradigm changes.
Beat Competition Through Stealth
Of course, India is familiar with the Wal-Mart name, and it has a large controversy as a foreign business trying to steal customers from local retailers. Thus, along with changing to wholesale business, they changed their name to BestPrice Modern Wholesale.
If you are looking to beat competition, you and your JV partner can work under a new business name and entity that can succeed at penetrating a higher market share. Of course, this requires market research and marketing strategies so make sure to carefully evaluate this decision.
Your next JV may be the right formula to thrust your business into new heights. With the right JV partner and strategies, you can find ways to make your business work in new areas that were previously impenetrable.
christian fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A joint venture marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.
To discover more joint venture marketing Strategies join his free joint venture marketing Wealth Report.