What is a trade-intensity coefficient?

It is the share of GDP per capita that buyers in a market typically spend on imported goods of a given category. Multiplying it by GDP per capita gives a per-person spend estimate, which scaled by population gives a rough addressable market for that product type.

How accurate is this estimate?

It is a top-down planning heuristic, not measured trade data. The coefficients are illustrative and the model ignores tariffs, local production, and competition. Use it to rank candidate markets, then validate the leaders against real customs and trade-flow statistics.

Why use GDP per capita instead of total GDP?

GDP per capita reflects individual purchasing power, which drives how much each buyer can spend on a category. Combining per-capita spend with population separates rich-small markets from large-poor ones, which total GDP alone obscures.

What target share should I use?

Use a realistic share you could capture given competition and your resources, often a low single-digit percentage for a new entrant. The tool keeps share as a separate input so you can run optimistic and conservative scenarios against the same addressable market.

Can I override the coefficient?

Yes. If you have a better trade-intensity figure from industry research or customs data, enter it in the override field. The embedded defaults are starting points to make the tool usable without external data, not authoritative values.

Trade Intensity & Export Revenue Estimator

When you are choosing which export markets to chase first, you need a fast, consistent way to rank them. This estimator combines a market’s GDP per capita, its population, and an industry trade-intensity coefficient into a rough addressable-market figure, then applies your target share to estimate export revenue potential.

How it works

The model is a simple top-down chain:

spend_per_capita   = gdp_per_capita × trade_intensity
addressable_market = population × spend_per_capita
export_potential   = addressable_market × target_share

The trade-intensity coefficient is the lever that adapts the model to your product — it captures how much of a buyer’s income flows to imported goods of that type. The tool ships with illustrative coefficients per industry that you can override with better data.

Example

A market of 10 million people with $12,000 GDP per capita in packaged food (2.5 percent intensity) implies roughly $300 per person, or a $3.0B addressable market. Capturing a 2 percent share would be about $60M in export revenue potential — a figure useful for ranking, not forecasting.

Notes

This is a prioritisation heuristic. It ignores tariffs, local production, logistics cost, and competitor presence, and the coefficients are illustrative. Use it to shortlist markets, then confirm the top candidates with real customs and trade-flow data before committing market-entry budget.