Foreign market analysis: Iran Pistachio as a case study

Abstract

Purpose- The main purpose of this paper is to develop a procedure which enables managers to identify foreign market opportunity for a specific product. For this purpose three steps were pursued. The first was to identify effective factors on Iranian pistachio export. The second, based on identified variables foreign market segmentation was done. The third step was to rank foreign market based on effective factors and calculated weights. Design/methodology/approach- This is a descriptive-analytical research which statistical data were used. For the purpose of hypotheses testing Factor analysis, Panel data analysis and Cluster analysis were used. Findings- The estimations results show that education, geographic distance, market concentration, mobile phones per 1,000 people and population had positive and significant effect on Iran pistachio export. Based on these factors and their calculated weights, foreign markets were segmented and ranked. Originality/value-In this paper, an integrated three-stage approach was developed for analyzing export opportunities of a particular product in selected foreign markets. © IDOSI Publications, 2012.