Cathy Thorpe, CEO of home care provider Nurse Next Door, is planning to expand the Vancouver-based business to Europe. Every market has a unique set of expectations, she says: ‘You can’t just say, ‘that works in Canada, so we’re going to do it here.’ ‘Mariel Nelms
Vancouver-based home care provider Nurse Next Door boasts franchise locations across Canada, the U.S., Australia and the U.K. But as the company turns its attention towards the European Union, chief executive officer Cathy Thorpe says it will need to consider just how much to adapt its services to accommodate the unique cultural needs of its first non-English speaking markets.
When Ms. Thorpe was hired as the company’s chief executive officer 10 years ago, Nurse Next Door had about 40 locations; today it has more than 400, with 70 head office staff and a work force of 5,000 caregivers across its network.
“We help people get back to what they used to love doing, and that concept of really taking care of someone – not just their physical needs, but also their mental needs,” Ms. Thorpe says. “It’s not always the big things; you start out with someone who went for a walk every day, and now they can’t, so you bring someone in who can help them go for a walk, and it brings joy back into that person’s life.”
While the need for companionship, physical support and emotional well-being is universal, Ms. Thorpe says every market has a unique set of expectations, needs and approaches to aging based on its cultural and political frameworks. “You can’t just say, ‘that works in Canada, so we’re going to do it here,’” she says. “We’ve had to really adapt our operations in each country.”
You need to know that the factors that made you successful here in Canada will also hold true where you’re looking to export.
— Karen Greve Young, CEO, Futurpreneur
The U.S., for example, is the only country that requires each franchisee to be licensed, while the U.K.’s National Health Service provides the country’s elderly with many of the basic services that make up Nurse Next Door’s primary offerings elsewhere.
As the company looks to expand beyond the English-speaking world, Ms. Thorpe fears those cultural needs and nuances will only grow, requiring the company to adapt in ways that stray from its original brand promise.
Finding the right balance between adapting to a new market’s unique features while maintaining brand consistency is a common challenge for businesses that expand globally, says Anthony Goerzen, a professor of international business at Smith School of Business at Queen’s University.
“So many firms grapple with exactly this issue,” he says. “On one hand, it is important to create and support a brand identity, and on the other, the values that brands provide must reflect the needs and wants of the target market.”
Mr. Goerzen points to the world’s most widely recognized global franchise, McDonald’s, as a strong framework. It provides its classic menu across all locations in tandem with unique offerings that suit local tastes, like the Butter Chicken burger, available only in India.
“The key issue for the brand is to enable local adaptation to the extent that the firm’s key core resources and capabilities can support it and create value; and, at the same time, do so without hurting the brand identity in its established markets,” he says.
Mr. Goerzen says it’s important for businesses to have a well-established “system” that has proven successful at home and can be replicated abroad with minimal changes.
“The standard formula is to have a novel, attractive product or service as well as a back-office workflow that can be downloaded and implemented easily,” he says.
“You need to know that the factors that made you successful here in Canada will also hold true where you’re looking to export,” adds Karen Greve Young, CEO of Futurpreneur, a national non-profit that provides loans and mentorship to young entrepreneurs. She explains that businesses looking to expand abroad need to evaluate the specific factors that led to their success at home and consider whether they remain applicable elsewhere.
“First, consider your customer base: do you have potential customers there?” she says. “The next would be the factors that allow you to operate, do they exist where you want to go? Can you get your goods and services there? Can you employ people using the same model?”
While those tangible factors are important, Ms. Greve Young also emphasizes the importance of defining the organization’s vision, mission, and purpose, prior to pursuing expansion abroad. “If you get to a place where you realize that in order for the company to go into a new market, they have to add offerings that are inconsistent with those core values … there’s a judgment call to be made,” she explains.
The organization will need to consider whether it’s worth updating its core principles to accommodate the needs of a new market, or back away from that market altogether, she says.
“It’s a slippery slope, and if you have to adapt to the point where you’re no longer providing a service that is true to who the company is, that’s probably a step not worth taking,” she points out.
“Change is the only constant in business; it’s just about figuring out what changes the company is comfortable taking on and doing it for the right reasons.”