Market seeking & strategy development in west and North African countries: A Turkish family business experience

Internationalization process of small- and middle-sized companies (SMEs) has been an object of wide-spread research efforts, and expansion of family firms is a developing a significant research area, (Sciascia et al., 2013; Rastorgueva, 2014). The companies that are planning to start targeting foreign markets need to conduct thorough research and establish a sufficient marketing strategy for potential internationalization. So, for the purpose of this study, the Turkey-based family company, Özyıl Tuz İşletmeciliği (ÖTİ), has been chosen. The mentioned company has been operating in Turkey for several years, producing and providing various salt-related products to the customers ("ÖTİ Gıda Ltd. Şti."). The company has been selected because the researcher has personally been working in the company when he was admitted there through the UPEP program. UPEP is an innovating program set up by the international trade department of his university to help foreign students getting work experiences, and also help the company to develop their international trade toward targeting markets. Being willing to expand its activities further, the organization has decided to start operating in North and West African regions as well. It can be stated that the company is in a strong need of developing a successful marketing strategy for such internationalization in order to be able to operate profitably in the chosen markets. Due to the fact the duties the researcher has been assigned within the company being related to the internationalization of ÖTİ in the mentioned regions, he witnessed most of the problems associated with the internationalization strategy of the company in West and North African regions. Therefore, the decision of conducting more thorough research on the issue of what aspects can be changed to make the internationalization strategy of the company more effective in the particular regions by using the action research method as a research methodology has been made. The Qualitative methodology of action research presumes that it "seeks to understand and improve the world by changing it" (Baum et al., 2006:854). Using this particular methodology, both researcher and participants, or the company in our particular case, are collaborating with the purpose of improving some of the practices in the organization. The action research is often associated with a number of benefits, including that it "undertakes research to bring about positive change and improvement in the participants' social situation and generates theoretical as well as practical knowledge about the situation" (Burns, 2015:187). Based on the researcher's personal experiences, the previous research and extensive literature review, this study focuses on an analysis of a Turkish family business, represented by ÖTİ, and identify whether the internationalization strategy chosen by the company when targeting North and West African regions was efficient. The literature review of this study focuses on the reasons for companies internationalization and their foreign market entring modes with a presentation of the Stages Model and Global Models. Some internationalization strategy analysis frameworks (SWOT, PESTEL, Five Forces Analysis) have been used to analyze both external and internal factors that influence the operational processes of the chosen organization. Based on the analysis of those factors and the company's past international experiences analysis, it has been found that the usage of the stage internationalization strategy by using first the export penetration mode by ÖTİ when entering West and North African markets is justified. Therefore, it can be stated that the penetration decision of internationalization strategy of the company is effective, providing a gradual potential for the company to pursue further investigation.