Elixir offers a variety of benefits to its buyers. Among the most important are a competitive price, features of the software that give it an advantage over its competitors, local support for customizing the product through local partnerships, and the opportunity to do business with a company, Elixir, that approaches business from a unique perspective in which flexibility is a guiding principle and the company respects the cultural uniqueness of each new market it enters.
Since 2000, Elixir's marketing strategy has revolved around geographic segmentation. This strategy involves specializing in serving the needs of customers in one or more particular geographical areas. The alternative to geographic segmentation is customer segmentation which involves identifying the people most likely to buy the product or service and targeting them with advertising and marketing.
Part of Elixir Technology's entry strategy has been focused on developing relationships with local partners. In Japan, Elixir's decision to focus on a smaller local company called GrapeCity facilitated its successful entry into the Japanese market. Elixir learned from this experience about how important the cultural context in when forming business relationships in opening a new market. This experience has been translated into a strategy for evaluating foreign markets for geographic expansion.
As an Egyptian, working with Mr. Lau would hold a number of challenges. The individual would need to convince Mr. Lau that he or she was the best person or represent Elixir in Egypt. Lau would need to be convinced of the individual's knowledge of the business landscape in Egypt as well as their specialized knowledge of the software business and the benefits that Elixir would offer over competitors.
Mr. Lau learned a number of things from his company's efforts to gain market share in China. He learned that a country is not necessarily a homogenous marketplace. In fa...