For local giants, or home-grown companies operating within one or a few markets in
Southeast Asia, the region’s 600 million consumers represent vast opportunity, as, of
course, do the two billion consumers in the ASEAN +6. The transport, tax, processing, legal,
packaging, investment and other associated barriers (just to name a few) are expected to
decline and will thus enable these companies to enter into markets they are currently not
active in. The proposed changes also make export options for many companies financially
feasible for the very first time.
Conversely, it will become increasingly important for both multinationals and local players
with high market share in individual countries to consider how they defend that share against
new market entrants while also seeking to understand which markets they can target in order
to capture greater share and drive sales growth. The reality of an open ASEAN marketplace
in 2015 is that there is an opportunity for a local company to enter a new market and secure
a significant share from another company, with neither having been aware of the other
beforehand.