A decision support model for the market development process for emerging markets in the automotive industry

The sales potentials for automotive companies in the core markets are decreasing and emerging markets, such as the BRIC-states or the ASEAN countries, are now in the focus of European automobile manufacturer's attention. However, the OEMs have to face different challenges in the market development process of these high potential markets. The high number of legal requirements both for the import of fully build up cars and the local production with globally sourced parts results in a very time consuming decision finding process which makes fast adjustments of the business model in case of a changing business environment nearly impossible. Therefore, this paper proposes an approach to support the decision finding process by identifying the influencing variables and developing a model for optimizing the OEM network configuration that enables demand fulfillment in all markets at minimal costs for automotive emerging market businesses.