The Exporters' Club dictates best practices to promote the internationalisation of Spanish companies
The Spanish Exporters and Investors Club has published a technical note containing a catalogue of good practices that Spanish companies in the process of internationalisation can use to legitimise themselves and compete successfully in foreign markets.
The document, written by Lourdes Rivero Gutiérrez and Alicia Blanco González, professors at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, was commissioned by the Exporters' Club through its Reflection Committee on Internationalisation, made up of prestigious professionals from the academic world, companies and public administrations.
The Club, which brings together the main Spanish exporters, considers that legitimacy, as a concept that forms part of modern strategic management, resolves many of the problems that companies encounter when they aspire to do business in international markets.
The concept of legitimacy is understood as the general perception of a company's activities in society and consists of a status that reflects cultural alignment, normative support or alignment with the relevant rules and laws of the country where the company operates.
"Legitimacy has been shown to influence financial performance, share price, ROA, non-systemic market risk, start-up survival, company internationalisation, stakeholder management and consumer purchase intent," explains Antonio Bonet, President of the Exporters' Club.
In the opinion of the Exporters' Club, once the threat of COVID-19 disappears, the market should normalise and exports should recover quickly and in a stable manner, which makes it essential for companies that have not yet taken the step of internationalisation to start preparing to face this challenge.
"As in other crises, exports will once again be a major driver to improve the situation and gain market share abroad, helping the economic recovery in a very valuable way. Therefore, companies must be prepared to take advantage of a new cycle of expansion," continues the president of the Exporters' Club.
To produce the document, the authors based their work on 12 interviews with those responsible for designing the internationalisation strategy of Spanish companies, both in the goods and non-tourist services sectors, and, based on their responses, a catalogue of six best practices that companies can apply in order to increase their legitimacy abroad, which they could adapt to their particular circumstances and sector, has been drawn up.
The first recommendation would be for the company to have a local presence. This strategy has been identified as one of the most decisive actions to improve the company's acceptance and win new projects, as it projects credibility and demonstrates commitment to the country or region.
The second best practice would be the establishment of alliances with prestigious local partners with local recognition. According to experts, partners provide key information for successful operations: they reduce acceptance barriers and entry barriers, facilitate access to local authorities, provide market information and help filter it, or shorten the entry cycle into new markets, indicating potential sources of business opportunities.
Credibility management would be the third best practice identified by the experts consulted. This would involve exploiting the company's credentials and references, past and most important successes, the company's technical and financing capacity, compliance with local and international standards, international certificates, regulatory compliance policies, code of ethics or impact on sustainable development objectives.
Fourthly, the experts place the signalling of the company's technical and managerial capacity in the context of stakeholders, investors, customers and partners.
The fifth recommendation is to identify the company's value proposition with the Spain brand and the Europe brand. The experts point out that, specifically, "the Spain brand tends to be an important asset to use, especially in some developing countries, while the Europe brand is a wild card that Spanish companies can use because of its image of prestige, rigour and seriousness and its great legitimacy in emerging markets".
The sixth and final good practice would be for the company to provide itself with a differentiated value proposition, demonstrating that it is innovative or highly specialised in a specific field.
