UK Based Businesses Across the EU

Firms have set up globally integrated production systems so that raw materials and parts for products (such as car and computers) can be bought in from across the globe for final assembly. Factories can be located in many parts of the globe usually where production and transport costs are lowest. This has been made possible by revolutions in communications, transportations, and information processing technologies.
When UK firms sell their goods in the UK they are selling to a market, which at most contains 60 million people. When the same firm extends its horizon to the European market, immediately the opportunities are far greater. The opening of the Single European Market on 1st January 1993 created golden opportunities for capitalising on a huge domestic market of 340 million customers, and this number is growing as new members join.
The global marketplace is dominated by three major areas: Japan, North America, and the European Union.
There are benefits to business from thinking globally. On the demand side, the company is faced with a much bigger target market on the supply side, it has the opportunity of reducing the costs of production through producing very large outputs of standardised products.
At the same time the UK market is under competitive attack from competitors, for example, from Japanese firms in consumer electronics, from European food producers, from Southeast Asian and Eastern European textile manufacturers, from computer data processing specialists in India, e.t.c.
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