Delineating Foreign Market Potential: A Tool for International Market Selection

International expansion is becoming more imperative in today's marketplace. However, determining which markets best suit a specific company is not a straightforward task. This study tackles the question of how managers should go about identifying, evaluating, and selecting foreign markets. For this purpose, we propose a practical, flexible, and forward-looking three-stage template for assessing foreign market opportunities and identifying the most promising international markets. The three stages include determining country responsiveness for a specific industry, estimating future industry growth, and incorporating an industry-relevant aggregate measure. The study illustrates the tool for three companies from various industries and discusses the implications. The proposed tool offers insights on crucial dimensions for the industry-specific market potential, and assists managers in identifying favorable foreign markets. This study also addresses the gap in the international market selection literature by developing a new empirical tool for foreign market analysis and selection using longitudinal secondary data. (C) 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.