The Growth Strategy of Successful International Companies

One thing I gained from reading about how Walmart, Starbucks and International Paper Company’s stories is that it really pays to have an effective growth strategy for a domestic company to become multinational. Success is never gonna happen overnight, thus, slow growth and poor financial performance can happen to all companies that don’t seek innovation and improvement. Just like what happened to the 3 companies, they all experienced stagnant growth and lower sales and profits throughout the years, as many new companies enter different industries and consumers also improve their standard when it comes to products and services. If companies want consumers to choose and be loyal to them, reaching a high standard is a must.

When it comes to Wal-Mart, I found out that their successful growth was because of their management’s strategy to acquire retail chains in other countries when they realized that their stores in America will not survive alone. They positively did such a bold and risky move and it all paid out. Once they managed to build retail stores all around the world, they have become the largest retail company when it comes to sales performance. This just proves that staying in one strategic place to build your business can be rewarding but not for long. Many new companies may take over and it is not healthy to fight them without having to grow economically and geographically and it takes risk taking to stay in the international market.

Starbucks, on the other hand, is such a strong brand and their reputation is really one of their greatest assets. I didn’t know that they had such a rough phase considering that they are one of the founders of coffee shops. Still, at some point, I get where their problem lies, companies that imitate their high-quality products, relaxing ambiance and snacks that they offer. Starbucks didn’t falter and decided to grow by building new stores to different cities all around the globe. Once they realized how fast-growing is their industry, they pushed to expand rather than getting beat up by new coffee shops. One thing I gained from their story is that if people see potential, they will try to imitate and push you out, and this applies also to businesses. Building such a powerful company means having many competitions that may out you but like Starbucks, every dedicated company can thrive by staying true to their service and continuing to create trends that will definitely attract us consumers.

International Paper Company is also one successful company all around the world. They were once the leader of their industry until time has come when they reached the point of slow growth and performance in their market. Papers in the long run become insignificant in some ways because of new technologies and developments that it is inevitable for IPC to lose their strategic place in the market. But the great thing that happened to them is when they didn’t let globalization liquidate their company and they stayed true to their company name, they went international. Investing in green-field companies in Brazil and acquisitions in Russia, their international growth pushed them at the top once again. The paper market in Latin America went under their control proving low-cost yet high quality products and services to their international consumers.

These three powerful companies in their own fields have many things in common.

• Their successes began when they took the risk to change their market from domestic to international. Although staying in their industry is difficult from the continuous development and higher standards of the people-

• they overcome and outsmarted new companies entering by strategizing one step forward and becoming resilient through expansion and growing from one target place to international position.

• Globalization is such an eye opener that those who innovate and transcend boundaries will stay stronger than those who will stay in the comfort zone of the corporate world.