How do social enterprises decide which countries to trade with?

A strategic approach to assessing which country to begin trading with internationally would look at:
 Suitable market for the product or service
 Similar social or environmental need
 Personal connections and understanding
 Ease of doing business
 Ease of communications and similarity of language
 Availability of support structures and finance

In reality, few social enterprises took such a strategic approach and internationalisation was more frequently driven by serendipity and chance encounters.

For one organization, the choice of countries in which to operate was a response to demand from their services.
A number of social enterprises were directly targeting the tourism market to sell their services.
Some organization focused on cross border countries as their choices for international trading operations.
Expat communities living abroad had influenced their trading locations of some social enterprises.
Even language skills and language similarities had also influenced trading choices.
For the social enterprises working in the aid and cooperation sector their choices of operational location was obviously driven by social
needs, and the same was for the social enterprises that work in the environmental sector.
Another choice of the countries where to internationalise a social enterprise was the result of a previous volunteering experience.