Identification and prioritization of obstacles and factors affecting the non-marketing of agricultural products of Lorestan province by farmers and experts

Due to the industrialization of societies, urban life, and the increase in demand for agricultural products, the distance between producers and consumers led to the formation of groups to establish communication links between food producers and consumers. This was the beginning of the formation of the marketing of agricultural products in the world. Efficient marketing of agricultural products will increase the income of rural people, which considering the key role of income in the stability of the rural economy, will indirectly increase the level of well-being and quality of life of the rural households. Lorestan province of Iran has 780 thousand hectares of arable land. But unfortunately, due to the lack of sufficient knowledge in the field of marketing and branding in the agricultural industry of this province, the products produced by farmers are either traditionally sold through local bazaars or sent to the markets of other provinces through brokers and intermediaries. Therefore, this aimed at identifying the existing obstacles to the development and progress of agricultural product marketing in this province. This was an applied study and the analytical-descriptive method was used to identify and prioritize the obstacles affecting the marketing of agricultural products in Lorestan province. The data and information of the research were collected in two ways of documents and surveys. The statistical population of the research included nine experts and professionals in the field of production, marketing, and sale of agricultural products in the concerned province. Also, the opinions of these experts were obtained to give weight to each of the indicators in the form of a questionnaire and face-to-face interview. Those who were among authorities tended to present their judgments in the form of a range instead of a fixed and specific value, the reason for this issue can be seen in the human nature and mental dispersion of the responsible people when making decisions. Therefore, what management science researchers paid special attention to in the 80s was the impact of qualitative criteria along with quantitative criteria in their conclusions and decisions. This effort led to the creation of Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method and then, Fuzzy Analytical Hierarchy Process (FAHP) method. In this research, the improved FAHP method was used for data analysis. In the first method, indicators are determined using different methods. After that, a questionnaire is prepared and the experts answer it, then fuzzy numbers are used to check the opinions of the experts.  As mentioned earlier, in this research, library resources were used to identify the indicators (obstacles) in the marketing of agricultural products. Thus, after many studies, 17 indicators were identified as effective indicators in the appropriate marketing of agricultural products, which were grouped into three main indicators of market structure and environmental, financial, and cultural factors. In the next step, questionnaires were prepared and given to the experts who were members of the statistical community of this study; and after completing these questionnaires, data analysis was done and the following results were obtained: Barriers (index) of market structure and environmental factors have seven sub-factors (sub-index). In this sub-index, lack of access to proper transportation was identified as the most important factor with a weight of 0.140. Financial barriers (index) have four sub-factors (sub-index). The results of the pairwise comparison of indicators related to financial obstacles showed that indicators of lack of sufficient capital for marketing and Lack of financial support from related institutions were identified as the first and second priorities in terms of importance with weights of 0.072 and 0.057. Cultural barriers (index) have six sub-factors (sub-index). For this index, after analyzing the data, it was found that the factors of farmers' lack of self-confidence and lack of marketing skills with weights of 0.057 and 0.053 had the most impact among the indicators of cultural barriers. Now, if we want to compare all the obstacles identified for the marketing of agricultural products in Lorestan province according to the weight of each of them, we will conclude that the index of lack of access to proper transportation with a weight of 0.140 is known as the most important factor among all the effective factors in the research. After this index, the indicators of the presence of middlemen and brokers with a weight of 0.103, and the lack of suitable facilities for packaging products with a weight of 0.080 took the next priorities.Discussion and Marketing is one of the most important activities that commercial organizations face. For this reason, in this research, the obstacles affecting the marketing of agricultural products in Lorestan province were investigated and prioritized. After analyzing the collected data, it was found that lack of access to proper transportation was the most important factor affecting the marketing of agricultural products in this province. According to the results of this research, it is suggested that the government, rural cooperatives, and non-governmental organizations implement policies to reduce the adverse effects of the factors identified in this research on the marketing of agricultural products so that by doing this, farmers' income would increase significantly. In addition to the stability of rural communities, we can witness the strengthening of the foundations of rural households and sometimes the reduction of social problems among them.