Prioritization of export promotion programs by Fuzzy linear assignment method

Abstract

Foreign business and export are the most important aspects of business and affect the country economics significantly. Therefore, governments try to stimulate the merchandises to export and extend their business abroad. This leads to better quality, extended markets, more customers and higher income. For this purpose, governments have considered some persuasive programs to promote exporting activities. However these programs do not influence export activities equally and their importance is different in exporters' viewpoint. In this paper we tried to use exporters' preferences and rank these promotion programs based on their opinions. Accordingly, we selected 15 exporters and asked them to rank 18 identified export promotion programs against to their effects on export procedures. The proposed Fuzzy Linear Assignment Method has assured responders that their uncertainty in ranking will be recognized in model. Finally the proposed method is applied for prioritizing the export promotion programs for Iranian food industry. Its results show that ambiguity of scoring among several options would be easy by considering each number as a triangular fuzzy number and it's more precise and reliable.