Internationalisation of the Hess AG

Project Report from the year 2011 in the subject Business economics - Offline Marketing and Online Marketing, grade: 1,0, Anglia Ruskin University (Ashcroft International Business School, Cambridge), course: International Marketing Strategies, language: English, abstract: The Hess AG (further called Hess) is a medium-sized company, located in Villingen-Schwenningen, Germany. It was founded in 1948 with only eight employees by Willi Hess as a small metal foundry. Throughout the years the company has grown continuously and began producing street lighting in the seventies. In cooperation with architects and industrial designers the company oriented toward creation and production of sophisticated lighting concepts and developed to one of the world's leading manufacturers of decorative and architectural street and outdoor lighting. Hess makes his mark with outperforming technological and sustainable products and reference projects like the lighting concept of the Olympia Park in Beijing (Hess AG, 2010a). Following Hess' growth and expansion strategy (Hess, 2010) this paper is going to analyse the Hess company internationalising into another country market. Possible markets will be detected and evaluated. Moreover, an appropriate entry method and a marketing strategy to penetrate the chosen market will be developed. ... (part of conclusion): To meet drivers of internationalisation such as economies of scale, managerial urge and high demand of innovative and sustainable lighting solutions, Hess as a German elite global market leader should enter Australia as a further step of growth. With its technological competences to produce sustainable high quality products and a strong brand it can compete and deal with the industry forces on the Australian market. However, Australia entails differences to the German market. A detailed evaluation of entry methods resulted in the establishment of a region centre including a marketing department as the most reasonable solution. The mutual exchange of experiences enables sales forces and marketers on the spot to position and penetrate the market effectively.