This chapter aims at understanding and explaining foreign market entry
and expansion of two Finnish middle-sized manufacturing companies. The
companies had relatively little previous experience in foreign markets
before they entered the Visegrad countries. The Visegrad countries, the
Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and the Slovak Republic, are the fastest
developing, most industrialized and westernized among the newly
emerging country markets of Central and Eastern Europe. The Finnish
companies evaluated their host country partner according to their
success in gaining long-term market position in the respective country
market. The cost of investment for the Finnish companies in the first
years of transition in the Visegrad economies was relatively low
compared to entry into Western markets. The Finnish companies assumed
that positioning themselves in the market and building consumer
awareness was the first step to achieving control over the market
gradually establishing direct relationships with customers.