International business includes any type of business activity that crosses across borders.

It refers
to the trade of goods, services, technology, capital and/or knowledge across national borders and
at a global or transnational level.

It involves cross-border transactions of goods and services between two or more countries.
Transactions of economic resources include capital, skills, and people for the purpose of the
international production of physical goods and services such as finance, banking, insurance, and
construction. International business is also known as globalization.
The impact of cultural, historical, political, economic characteristics can influence every
international business’ activity. Developments and associated changes in international business
have led professionals to recognise the importance of decision making skills when trading across
borders. In this case, cultural, historical, political and economic characteristics are essential in
the stage of development and planning mechanisms. Form analysis is very necessary to review
the organisational environment and should be observe step by step. According to research, PEST
analysis (also known as Step Analysis) can be helpful in scanning the business environment and
discussed by Francis Aguilar. This is known as a ‘trend analysis’ wherein the external
environment of an organisation, partnership, community etc. can be assessed by breaking down
into what is happening at political and economic levels. Political factors have a big impact on
international business because both big and small political forces and influences may affect the
performance of an organisation. On the other hand, the economic influences and ecological
factors can also influence the activities happening in an international business because the nature
of the competition faced by the organisation or its services, and to find out the financial services
available within the economy. When we trade goods across borders which makes a wider
ecological system and of which the organisation is a part and consideration of how the
organisation interacts with it. General knowledge is also essential to know the current state of
international events and activities happening in the economy. One thing that we should still
consider especially when running a business internationally is decision-making. It is more
natural to certain personalities and should require more focus in order to improve the quality of
decisions. We must ensure the factors that need to be considered because this is intended as a
good exercise in marketing a business. The history and culture of a business has a big impact on
international activities because it comprises multinational enterprise and that leads to historical
development. Multinational enterprises range from any kind of business activity or market, from
consumer goods to machinery manufacture; a company can become an international business.
Therefore, to conduct business overseas, companies should be aware of all the factors that might
affect any business activities, including political systems, economic policy, language, accounting
standards, living standards, economical standards, local cultures, corporate cultures, foreign-
exchange markets, tariffs, import and export regulations, trade agreements, climate,
and education. Each of these factors may require changes in how companies operate from one
country to another and each factor makes a difference and a connection.

2. There are information sources that can build or help an organisation identify
trends/developments and also the competitor activities that are relevant to boost international
markets and those include:
Customers
Prospects
Universities that can provide up-to-date research data and analyses.
Industry Influencers
Industry Publications
Social Media
Digital tools and analytics that help assess industry behaviour.
Observation of competitors
A range of mailing list of publications
Industry Associations
Online directories
World industry reports
Newspapers, magazines and other media.
Government statistics.
In order to identify the trends in a market, you must listen and lean attention to your customers. It
pays to talk to your customers. Don’t be afraid to have a chat with them and learn more about
their pressure points to discover what more your business can do to help them. Your target
market could provide valuable insight into possible changes in their behaviours and needs. With
resource management being increasingly emphasized, marketing professionals have to justify the
marketing investments. Thus, it becomes imperative to focus on right side of prospects and
engage with business activities on continuous basis to maximize the productivity and operation
of the business. We must also identify the industry influencer on whom or what is influencing
the direction of the industry and customer perceptions of the industry and in order to do that is to
use social media as a tool for keeping track of industry and their points of view and being part of
the conversation. Moreover, digital tools and analytics contribute a big help in assessing the
industry behaviour. The company must also focus on competitor observation. Most successful
businesses don’t follow the crowd; they innovate and break new ground in order to stand out
from the noise. However, observation of your competitors can often give you a good picture of
their market positioning and whether they are reacting to what could be seen as an emerging
trend. Competitor analysis doesn’t have to cost the earth. By simply reviewing their website,
customer reviews and social media channels is possible to understand how you compare to your
competitors because it is essential to create a benchmark among competitors for the business to
stand out and to satisfy consumer’s trend.

Market research results and statistical analyses are used to identify and interpret trends and
developments in international markets. Statistical analysis of market data requires the collection,
collation and analysis of data to make it useful and useable for identifying trends and
developments in the market. This analysis can make it possible to determine whether these trends
and developments will have positive or negative impacts on a business.

It is the emergence of tools that enable beginners to analyze market research data. This is
especially valuable for looking at the same data sets in ways, and attempting to glean new and
interesting insights.
While these tools have various strengths and weaknesses, they cover all of the following
statistical methods:

 Factor Analysis: This method is used to establish what are the strongest underlying
dimensions of a bigger set of intercorrelated variables.

 Cluster Analysis: This method is used when the goal is to group a set of data objects
together into homogenous groups.

 Conjoint Analysis: This method is used when the purpose is to distinguish how market
research respondents perceive and evaluate different variables that are part of a product
or service.

 Multiple Regression: This method is used to predict the value of a variable, based on
changes to two or more different variables
 Discriminant Analysis: This method is used for predicting membership in a group (or
population or cluster) based on measured characteristics of other variables.

Otherwise, analytical tools that are also available is the quantitative and qualitative
research wherein quantitative is structured and relies on numbers and the
qualitative research focuses on how people feel, their ideas and opinions: what they
think and why they make choices.