ABSTRACT
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.
