The effect of firm characteristics and the propensity to export decision in food industry

Abstract

This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the effects of firm and management team’s characteristics to develop food industry. The proposed study considers four factors associated with firms and 9 factors, which are related to management team’s characteristics. There were 50 firms in food industry in province of Tehran, Iran and the study has been accomplished among all 50 existing firms. For each firm, between 2-3 questionnaires were distributed among experts in each firm. Cronbach alpha has been calculated as 0.879, which is well above the minimum acceptable level. The results indicate that management knowledge about export market was number one important factor followed by the level of technology used, competitive advantage, believe in being profitable.