Iranian Journal of Trade Studies
Year:2009 | Volume:13 | Issue:51|Papers Count:10

This study investigates the impact of globalization on non-oil exports in Iran based on monetary and non-monetary factors through application of GMDH neural network model, as a tool with high ability for tracing and indicating complex nonlinear trends, especially when limited number of observations are available. The research has used International Trade Integration criteria and trade openness index as indices of globalization.The findings of this research illustrate that the impact of the growth of the world income and the growth of imported capital goods on non-oil exports in Iran is more important than the effect of other factors in globalization process. Furthermore, this study concludes the growth of GDP as an internal factor has a significantly major effect on increasing non-oil exports.

Safety of consumer goods is an important part of consumer protection laws all over the world. The importance of this subject is so immense that some have counted the right of consumers to have safe products as "fundamental" and "part of human rights".This subject has been considered important both in international and national levels. United Nations and European Union are the pioneers of international legislation on consumer safety and product safety.In national levels, western countries have done more in comparison with eastern countries to provide adequate legislations in consumer and product safety.This article aims to provide a thorough investigation of the subject in both international and national levels. It also tries to specifically investigate Iran laws to find out if any legislation is in place and if any further enactment to bring the country's legislation in line with the developments in the field is needed.

Due to increased production of saffron, Iran has been looking for new export markets during recent years. However, a persistent question has been which countries are suitable for export and what criteria are to be employed to recognize those countries. Thus, this article tries to estimate the "Iran's export capacity for saffron" and recognize "its target markets" for 2002-06. The results are as follows: Fifty countries import saffron, but only 12 countries including, inter alia, the United States, France, Japan and Saudi Arabia are major importers thereof. Major importers of Iran's saffron are the United Arab Emirates, Spain, Italy, Saudi Arabia, France and Sweden. Iran's maximum export potential index for saffron suggest that 12 countries including Spain, Italy, the United States, Sweden, France, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Japan, Thailand, Australia, Argentina and Germany have most import potential for Iran's saffron. By virtue of idle import potential index for Iran's saffron in absolute terms (million dollars) during 2002-06, the United States, Japan, Sweden and the United Kingdom emerge as the best target markets for Iran's saffron. According to the same index in relative terms (percent), the best target markets for Iran's saffron are the United States, Hong Kong, Belgium, Singapore, Japan, Canada, Australia, Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Argentina, Norway and Italy with over 50 percent of their import potential being idle. Using eight criteria examined in the article reveals that countries such as the United States, Japan, Canada, Australia, Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Argentina, Norway, Belgium and Italy are among the most important target markets for Iran's saffron.

Survey analysis of consumers' behavior of allocating limited income to the purchase of different goods and services is one of the important topics in economics, which is used in economic decision making. In doing economic studies, different methods can be used. In recent years in order to study the sensitivity of commodities prices and the variation of real income, a great attention was given to almost ideal demand system model. In this research, our main objective was to estimate demand function and analysis of consumer behavior in various urban regains of Isfahan province and average of the country in the period (1979-2005), we applied the same technique in compound with habit formation.The results of statistical analysis show that after the Iran-Iraq war period the cost share of the non-food expenditure in the constant price of year 2005 were be I.7 and 3 times the cost share of food expenditure in average of the country and Isfahan province respectively. This indicates that in this period the economic welfare was increasing especially in Isfahan province.Accordingly to the results of Wald Test, homogeneity and symmetry hypotheses are rejected and habit formation is affected on consumers demand. The signs of price elasticities were as expected for all commodity categories. The estimated income elasticities indicate that in the Isfahan province the "food" and ''wear &shoes" and in the average of the country the "food" and "housing & fuel" categories are considered as necessity and other categories are considered luxury.

In a constantly changing global competitive environment, an organization's supply chain agility directly impacts its ability to produce, and deliver innovative products to their customers in a timely and cost effective manner. While the beneficial impact of supply chain agility is generally acknowledged, very little research exists to date addressing how an organization can achieve supply chain agility. This study first presents a framework of a process based organization's supply chain agility, and then establishes the key factors that determine the agility attributes of the four critical processes of the supply chain-new product development, sourcing, manufacturing, and delivery. In developing model SCOR model and other models are used. Using empirical data, we develop agility scales related to our supply chain agility model, and then test the model. In this process 4 main supply chain processes transform to 3 processes (new product development, delivery management and sourcing & manufacturing management). Using structural equation modeling (SEM) we show that supply chain agility of a firm is directly and positively impacted by the degree of new product development and sourcing & manufacturing management supply chain process agility; while it is indirectly impacted by the delivery management process. The finding of this paper can be used as an idea for designing organization and efforts for getting theoretical and empirical feedback.

Bilateral preferential trade agreements (PTA's) are important tools for trade promotion. Despite the role of multilateral trading system (as materialized in WTO) bilateral trade agreements continue to be an international trade policy tool. Before a bilateral trade agreement is signed choosing the partners and negotiating the agreement are two essential steps. Trade promotion depends on how these previous stages including the analytical study on selecting among the potential partners is accomplished.So far Iran has had little practical experience in application of policy tools in its trade policy and its effects on trade, the methodology applied in this study serves as a preliminary theoretical tool to compare three potential parties. The applied method selects and ranks them according to their potentials in terms of trade creation and trade diversion.Michaely method is applied to compare Indonesia, Turkey and Syria in terms of potentials of trade diversion and trade creation as parties to PTA with Iran. The results of the study indicate that an agreement between Iran and Indonesia is more relevant than agreements with Turkey and Syria, who are respectively next in potential partners ranking.

This paper, with reviewing 23 key papers published between 2001 and 2007, and by extracting and gathering of risk factors in the literature has developed a checklist including 25 risk factors of customer relationship management (RCM) projects. It then reviews all kinds of classifications in key factors of success or failure in CRM literature and chooses the best classification, and presents new framework of risk factors of CRM project by placing the extracted risk factors in this classification. Because of hierarchal of proposed framework and multi dimensions nature of risk, Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (FAHP) is used to prioritize based on active project managers' judgments as experts in organizations which service, consult, and sell CRM software in Iran. In Iranian organizations based on experts' judgments the risk factors in the first life cycle phases of CRM such as "changes in the stakeholders and top management, "and "managers" incorrect cognition of CRM and its operational and strategic benefits" become the most important risk factors in CRM projects in 2008. The risk factors in the next life cycle phases of CRM like general factors of classification "dynamic assessment and monitoring' have the lowest priority.

Designing and developing an effective marketing mix is an important issue for marketing planners who wish to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage particularly in the field of durable consumption goods with a seasonal supply and demand. Hence, to enjoy a coherent and dynamic mix, it would be an effective strategy to decide on the evaluation of every component of the marketing mix and to study the ways these components will interact to respond to the environmental changes.The main purpose of this paper is to determine the share and value of each of the underlying variables in the marketing mix in accordance with the marketing goals and strategies of a firm. The review of earlier studies indicate that the marketing mix component such as competitor's price, competitor's quality, competition intensity, sales forecast, and customers' satisfaction level have been mainly stochastic, dynamic, vague, imprecise, qualitative or intangible that require approaches coherent with the innate nature of these variables. However, in most of the current models, the issue of designing a mix with structured approach and in a time-series framework has been handled without paying enough attention to the data nature and humane judgments, and the impact of the input variables on output variables. In the meantime, this paper tries to compensate for the aforementioned shortcoming by employing a fuzzy approach in modeling, reliance on the actual performance data, and analysis of the experts' views. Abstracts 9 Thus, the present article studies the prevailing criticism to the various marketing mix frameworks from both content approach and procedural approach and also defines different methods to determine the mix constituents and then designs and expands a model corresponding to a distinct brand and product line- but not to the whole firm- indicating that the new employed approach tends to be more suitable with the modem business as well as the marketing strategy.