Application of a multi-criteria approach in the teaching of international market research

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to present the application of a methodology that seeks facilitating the teaching about the selection of international markets, focused on firm internationalization. The existing literature that validates this type of approach for decision-making is analyzed, identifying the general factors that have influence on the selection of new export markets. Then a new economic factor is proposed with a series of sub-factors to be analyzed, such as country risk, consumer price index, GDP per capita and the unemployment rate. The analytic hierarchy process technique was developed in order to rank the judgments made by ten chemical companies for each of the previously established dimensions. The results suggest that factors such as costs, logistics, trade barriers, economics, and environment and culture are taken into account, in this order of importance, for the exportation of chemical products from Colombia; while the most attractive markets for this case are the United States, Honduras and Ecuador.