Organisations go abroad for reasons, and some are better than others. Growth at home has slowed. Customers abroad have found you. A product that suits a niche has too few buyers in one country. Or a rival is moving first. Write your reason down, because it decides how much risk is sensible. "We could" is not a reason.

Choosing between markets. Compare at least three candidates on the same criteria, and write the evidence beside each, not just a score.

Psychic distance. Psychic distance is how different a foreign market feels in language, culture, business practice and law. It is not the same as miles. A market a short flight away with a different legal system can be further, in the way that matters, than one with a long flight and familiar habits. It is also dangerous in the other direction: when a market feels close, we skip the checks.

UK example: Tesco's Fresh & Easy. Tesco is one of the UK's largest and most experienced grocers. In 2007 it opened its first Fresh & Easy stores in the United States. In April 2013 it announced that it would leave the US and sell the business. The trade press reported a charge of about £1.2bn for the exit, much of it writing down the value of the US stores and leases; reports before the announcement had put the bill at about £1bn. Reasons were debated at the time. You don't need to settle them to use the case: a large, experienced retailer found that skill at home did not guarantee results in a market that looked familiar enough to enter. Read what Tesco itself said, and reputable press from the period, before you draw your own conclusion. Check the dates and wording at the source.

Your organisation's candidates. Read the worked example later in this topic first: it compares three markets for Larkfield Coffee Roasters. Then pick three for your organisation. Include one that feels close and one that feels far, and ask whether the one that feels close has earned its place or has just not been questioned.

Once you have a market, you need to know how its customers might think differently. Cultural frameworks give you questions to ask. They don't give you answers.

Hofstede's dimensions. Geert Hofstede compared national cultures on a handful of measures, set out in Hofstede, Hofstede and Minkov, Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind (3rd edition, 2010). The dimensions include power distance (how far people accept unequal power), individualism and collectivism, uncertainty avoidance (how uncomfortable people are with the unknown) and long-term orientation. Each country gets a score. These are cultural dimensions.

Hall's high and low context. The anthropologist Edward T. Hall described, in Beyond Culture (1976), a difference in how much meaning sits in the words and how much in the setting. In a low-context style, the message is in what is said, plainly. In a high-context style, much is understood from tone, relationship and what is left unsaid. A direct "buy now" suits one; it may feel pushy in another.

Handle with care. Both frameworks describe national averages, not individuals. The person you are writing to may be nothing like the average, and your target segment, such as Home Brew Enthusiasts, may share more with enthusiasts in another country than with its own neighbours. Critics also point out that Hofstede's original data came from employees of one company, that countries aren't uniform, and that culture changes. Use the dimensions to generate hypotheses to test, never to label a nation.

What to adapt. Culture shows up in practical things:

• language, spelling, and humour that doesn't travel
• imagery and colour, and who appears in photos
• trust signals: which reviews, badges and guarantees people there recognise
• payment habits: the payment methods customers expect to see at checkout
• delivery and returns expectations
• when and why people buy, such as the gifting seasons

Segments travel differently. You chose a target in Module 3. Ask whether it exists in the new market, how big it is, and whether its path to purchase looks the same. A segment can be common at home and thin abroad, or the other way round.

Same language is not the same culture. Think of how differently "quite good" is heard in different English-speaking places. A phrase that sounds warm in one can sound lukewarm in another. A shared language removes one barrier and hides the rest.

A market entry mode is the way an organisation enters a new country. For an online seller the main choices are these.

These are the routes from Module 11 with a border added.

The rules after Brexit. This is a list of what to check, not legal advice.

• Customs: goods sent from Great Britain to Ireland are exports and imports, with paperwork. What is needed, who files it and whether duty applies depend on the goods, their value and where they were made. The EU's duty rules for low-value parcels changed on 1 July 2026, so don't rely on older guides. Check GOV.UK's guidance on exporting goods and the Irish Revenue Commissioners' customs pages.
• VAT: goods sold to consumers there fall under the destination's VAT rules. The EU's Import One-Stop Shop scheme, explained on Irish Revenue's website, covers low-value consignments up to a stated limit. Check the current limit and the VAT rate on your product; don't assume the UK's.
• Consumer law: EU customers generally have a 14-day right to cancel distance purchases under the Consumer Rights Directive, with exceptions that vary by product.
• Data protection: EU GDPR applies when you sell to people in Ireland, even from the UK. Your privacy notice, email consent and cookie banner must meet it, and you may need an EU representative. The regulator is the Data Protection Commission. You met the UK version in Module 5.
• Currency: you earn in one currency and spend in another, and rates move. Label any rate you use as an assumption.

Contribution per unit falls. Repeat the contribution sum from the routes topic for the new market and expect a lower answer: postage is higher, customs may add handling, and payment methods can cost more. If it falls far, your price, costs or plan must change.

Northern Ireland. This topic means the Republic of Ireland. Northern Ireland has its own arrangements and isn't covered here.

Localisation means adapting content, language, prices, payment and service so they feel native to a market, not just translated. Translation changes the words. Localisation changes the offer.

Standardisation and adaptation. You will keep some things the same everywhere, such as your brand name and quality, and adapt others. The question for each element is whether it works unchanged. If not, is the gain from changing it worth the cost? Keep what makes you recognisable. Change what gets in the customer's way.

What to localise.

• Proposition: You wrote it in Module 4. Does every promise in it still hold in the new market? A delivery promise made for home may not survive a border.
• Prices: Set a local price in the local currency, check it against local competitors, and work out what it earns after local costs. Show the price including anything the customer must pay, so there are no surprises at checkout.
• Delivery and returns: Say what arrives when, who carries it, and what a return costs and how it works.
• Proof local customers trust: Reviews from customers in that market, recognisable payment options and a clear way to reach a person. Never write or buy reviews; the fake reviews rules you met in Module 11 apply at home, and EU consumer law bans them too.

AI activity. Choose three pieces of your marketing copy: a headline, a product description and a delivery message. Ask an AI assistant to translate or adapt them for your chosen market. Do not include personal or confidential data. Then have a native speaker, or a reliable local source such as a local retailer's website or a customer from that market, check the results. Record what the AI missed: wrong register, a phrase nobody uses, a promise that isn't true there. Keep the original, the AI version and your notes in your portfolio. They show your judgement.

Milestone 3 closes the Commercial stage. A second-market ecommerce plan is one document setting out which market you chose and why, how you'll enter, what the offer and rules are, and how you'll launch and measure it. It pulls together your work from the routes, loyalty and international topics. Read the worked example later in this topic first: it shows Maya's plan for Larkfield.

The sections, each drawn from earlier work:

Make the sections agree. The market you chose should be the market your culture, rules and prices describe. The route should match the entry mode. The contribution per unit should use the local price and the local costs, not the home ones. Check each join before you call the plan finished.

Name what you'd test before launching. You will not have proof. Say what you would learn first, cheaply: a small test, a conversation with someone from the market, a trial order to see the real delivery time and cost. Say what result would make you stop.

Leadership: who will do what. A launch asks people to do new work. Name an owner for each task: the plan, the storefront, the customer service, the checks on the rules. Be clear about who decides whether to go ahead. Ask each person whether they can repeat their part in a sentence.

Looking ahead. The plan feeds the business case you will make later in the course, so write the numbers as clearly as you can and label every assumption.