Screening export markets by identifying and prioritizing effective macro indices in steel industry

Selecting a country or countries for entering foreign markets is considered a strategic decision that require significant consideration and deliberation. The quality of such decision will bring about some conditions and necessities for an enterprise and can potentially affect the possibility of advantage creation, exchange cost as well as the effective capability of transferring knowledge in companies. Although presence in global markets can be beneficial and bring many advantages for an enterprise, it can also be as much risky and pose numerous risks. Major risks that can be incurred depend on the selection of foreign markets and the status of presence in that markets, but sound decision making in every field requires identification of effective variables of the decision and having adequate and relevant information in that field. This research examines and identifies effective macro indexes for selecting export markets in steel industry and after identification and prioritizing mentioned indexes, will work on screening and removing markets in which Mobarakeh Steel Company won't have competitive advantage. Screening the countries has been done in two stages and finally has been presented a list of 45 countries out of 193 that are members of the United Nations and can be suitable markets for this company. The research findings show that environmental and political-legal indexes reflect much more importance among other identified indexes to determine target markets. Economical indexes mirror medium importance while social-cultural and technological indexes are considered the least important ones among others.