Identifying and Ranking the Barriers to Export Methanol of Petrochemical Companies in Target Markets

According to custom's statistics, in 2012, methanol products was the first product among the Islamic Republic of Iran's major non-oil export items of goods which Almost 4 percent of the country's exports of these goods has been allocated to this product. However, petrochemical companies are faced with several barriers in methanol to export target markets. This study aims to identify and rank barriers to export methanol in petrochemical companies in Iran as well. This study is application with respect to purpose and descriptive–explorative regarding data collection. The study sample consisted of managers and experts in Iran's petrochemical companies. In this study, we used simple random sampling method and sample size is 192 individuals. Data were collected through questionnaires. Validity and reliability of questionnaire was reviewed from formal content validity method and Cronbach's alpha, respectively. Exploratory factor analysis was used and 7 factors were identified as barriers to the export of petrochemical companies’ methanol and the based on the contents of questions of each factor, a proper name was selected for them. These factors include infrastructure - financial elements, lack of competitive advantages, government, slow customer acquisition, trade uncertainty, trade restrictions and activities to promote sales. W. Kendall test was used to rank the factors. The results showed that the most important factor and the least important factors are government and infrastructure-financial, respectively.