A Start-up Expansion Plan to the French Market

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to create an expansion plan for an e-commerce focused start-up. While the CEE market doesn’t offer enough opportunities for its SaaS product, the company Disivo seeks to find new customers on the French market.

The methodology of the paper starts with the macroenvironment description using the PESTLE analysis, the outcomes of the pandemic projection and the business ethics introduction. Furthermore, the field environment analysis consists of a secondary research of dynamic pricing adaptiveness and Porter’s five forces analysis. Finally, the microenvironment analysis aims to portray the company using the 4P analysis and McKinsey 7S Framework. All the methods used are concluded in the SWOT analysis.

The aim of the paper is to project an expansion marketing plan while defining the key metrics to measure its success and potential risks of the expansion. Also, the paper should consist of a cost forecast projection and a detailed schedule of specific activities.

While the French market offers a lot of potential for the company as a second biggest e-commerce market in Europe, there are several potential threats. The market attracts many technologically advanced competitors and the risk that most of the potential customers have their own solution is significant. The solution is to split up the expansion plan to 3 stages to eliminate potential risks.

In conclusion, the findings of the paper were used to draw up a 3-phase expansion plan which will take about 3 years. In the end, the company should be a market leader on the field of dynamic pricing solutions. The profit gained from the expansion would be invested into the further product, marketing and sales development.

Keywords: dynamic pricing, e-commerce, automation, France, expansion, start-up, SaaS