GDP growth, regulation, market size, and competitive intensity can establish that an opportunity exists. They cannot tell a company whether its business model will survive local channels, informal rules, enforcement practices, trust mechanisms, and the costs of being an outsider.
A market entry team can build an excellent country case and still recommend the wrong operating model. The market is growing, customer need is clear, regulation permits entry, and the five-year return looks attractive. Then practical questions emerge. Who actually controls access to the buyer? How is trust established? Which written rules are enforced, and which informal rules determine whether transactions happen at all?
These are not implementation details. They are part of the market.
Country attractiveness stops too early
Country screens are useful because they make opportunities comparable. They organize market size, growth, income, regulation, competition, and macro risk. But national averages describe an environment, not the institutions through which a specific business must operate.
The same product can face different economics across regions, channels, or customer groups. A healthcare company may be entering several local procurement systems rather than one national market. An industrial supplier may depend on a single manufacturing cluster. A digital platform may require local payment, identity, or trust infrastructure that a country report barely mentions.
The next question is whether the company's operating model can travel.
Investigate the last mile
Seven areas repeatedly change market entry decisions:
Transaction intermediaries that provide distribution, credit, authentication, settlement, insurance, or trust
Channel power and the economics that determine which products intermediaries promote
Buyer workarounds that differ from formal procurement processes
Informal rules governing relationships, reputation, reciprocity, and acceptable behavior
Enforcement practice, including who enforces the rules and how consistently
The liability or advantage of being foreign
Local cases that should not exist if the current entry thesis is correct
The goal is not to collect colorful anecdotes. It is to identify local mechanisms that could change demand, cost, speed, control, or risk.
Sample the system
Senior executives offer useful strategic context, but they rarely see the entire transaction. A stronger interview plan samples different positions in the system: customers, former customers, distributors, local operators, suppliers, regulators, professional advisers, and service providers.
The sample should follow the commercial mechanism. If success depends on channel adoption, speak with people who understand channel incentives. If the issue is enforcement, speak with operators who have experienced inspections, approvals, or disputes. If trust drives purchasing, investigate how buyers verify quality and resolve failure.
Ask each respondent about observable behavior. What actually happens when a customer buys? Who influences the choice? Where does the process stall? What evidence would contradict the prevailing view?
Triangulate local evidence
Local knowledge can be biased. A distributor may overstate the need for intermediaries because direct entry threatens its economics. A former executive may describe a market that has already changed. One city may not represent the country.
Triangulate interviews with observable evidence such as pricing, transaction flows, licensing records, partner economics, customer behavior, litigation, enforcement actions, or operating results from comparable entrants.
Record both the source and the confidence behind each material claim. When perspectives conflict, preserve the disagreement and identify what would resolve it.
Convert findings into entry design
Every important finding should change or confirm a decision. The team should choose among five outcomes:
Keep the global model
Adapt the product, pricing, process, or proposition
Partner to access a missing local capability
Acquire an established position or institution
Do not enter until a defined condition changes
Entry mode should follow the institutional problem. A partner makes sense when local relationships or infrastructure are essential and difficult to build. Acquisition may be justified when trust, licenses, or distribution are embedded in an existing organization. Direct entry may remain best when intermediaries add cost without solving a real constraint.
Keep the review compact
A last mile review does not need to become an ethnography. For each critical assumption, capture the local mechanism, supporting and disconfirming evidence, commercial effect, confidence, and design implication.
The review should be judged by whether it changes the entry recommendation, not by the number of interviews completed.
Where Enquire fits
This research often requires comparable perspectives from several positions and jurisdictions. Enquire can combine structured research with direct input from experienced operators and specialists, while preserving the context behind each question.
That makes it possible to test the same entry assumptions across markets without flattening local differences. Expert evidence can be connected to a specific channel, enforcement mechanism, or buyer behavior and revisited as the team refines the operating model.
Strategy becomes real in the last mile
Macro analysis answers whether a market may be attractive. Last mile research determines whether the company can operate there profitably and with acceptable risk.
The strongest entry recommendation explains not only why demand exists, but also how transactions happen, who controls access, which rules matter in practice, and what the company must change before its model can travel.
Sources and further reading
1. Tarun Khanna and Krishna Palepu, Strategy and Execution for Emerging Markets, Harvard Business School; 2. Pankaj Ghemawat, Distance Still Matters The Hard Reality of Global Expansion, Harvard Business Review; 3. Srilata Zaheer, Overcoming the Liability of Foreignness, Academy of Management Journal; 4. Dau Moore and Bradley, Informal Institutions and the International Strategy of MNEs, Journal of International Business Studies; 5. World Bank, Business Ready 2025; 6. OECD, Boosting Business in Regions