Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
Abstract
Evidences indicate that the Islamic Republic of Iran enjoy a reasonable amount of comparative advantage in their processed foodstuff to export to the neighboring countries, particularly to the U.A.E Despite this fact, the country's processed food exporters have failed to gain advantage of this opportunity. Present paper is aimed at elucidating some outstanding reasons for this problem. Three groups of questionnaires were prepared in two languages (Persian and English) to ask the views of the members of a sample of importers, sellers, and consumers of these products of Iran it the U.A.E. Non - parametric statistical methods such as the Mann - Whitney, the Kruskal - Wallis, and Friedman were used to test the hypotheses of this research. Quite a few reasons were found to account for the Iranian exporter's meager success in placing the above products in the hands of their Arab consumers, who regarded the quality of these products as high. However, a lack of knowledge of these exporters of the modern exporting concepts or otherwise their lack of willingness to rely on experts in this field to handle the relevant issues for them were found to be the most important impediment to the export of these foodstuff to the U. A E. To offer some suggestions for the promotion of these products of Iran in the U.A.E. AHP model was used to rank consumers, responses to the question "What do they take into account in deciding to purchase as item of processed foodstuff?" The paper is concluded with a summary and some policy suggestions. Suggestions are also provided for further research.
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