You are an analyst working in an early-stage SaaS business that wants to expand to the

global markets except for India and Southeast Asia where they are already present. The

company provides customer experience software for retail businesses. This software is sold

to companies - one license for each store location that they own. Due to the COVID-19

pandemic and subsequent downturn in the business, the Board of Directors has directed you

to focus on large companies that would've survived the economic aftershocks and have the

ability to pay. However, the sales and marketing team with the benefit of being on the ground

strongly believes that targeting smaller retail stores and chains will be more fruitful, as

businesses have become more localized / closer to home as people don't typically go to

larger places. The team believes that these businesses have been doing well. In addition to

that, the pharma and grocery store chains have typically been doing well in these times as

they cater to essential goods. The Head of Sales has hypothesized that the areas of online

shopping that have grown during the pandemic are a good indicator of these verticals

scaling up offline/in retail mode as well, as things start coming back to normal gradually.

Task

Keeping these factors in mind, you need to come up with answers to the following questions

-

How do you decide the ideal target market? You are expected to outline the list of

factors that you will take into account for judging the potential revenue (in US Dollars

terms) that you can make in every country/market globally. Outline the reason why

you have selected each factor as well.

Identify the target markets - Once, you have arrived at the list of factors for

short-listing the markets, you need to find data against each factor for each country,

and come up with the list of top-3 countries (except India and those in Southeast

Asia) that you will target.

Delve deeper into target markets - Find out at least 5 relevant macro-economic or

market insights from industry reports, e-books, etc. for the top-3 markets from your

priority order list. You are also expected to come up with a list of 5 retail companies in

these three markets that you will reach out to as well.