The role of entry into regional markets in fulfilling brand promise

Article history: Received June 10, 2014 Accepted 10 November 2014 Available online November 12 2014 This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the role of entry into regional markets in fulfilling brand promise. The study designs two questionnaires, one for measuring brand promise and the other for measuring export capabilities, in Likert scale and distributes it among 250 randomly selected producers who were involved in production and development of various products in city of Esfahan, Iran. Cronbach alphas were calculated for brand promise and export capabilities as 0.856 and 0.812, respectively. Using structural equation modeling, the study has detected seven factors including product development, public advocacy, strategic orientation, customer satisfaction, competitive pressures, organizational capabilities and distribution strategies. Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved. 4 © 201 Export Distribution channels Organizational capabilities Customer satisfaction


Introduction
During the past few years, there have been tremendous efforts on detecting important factors for product development and export activities (Filatotchev et al., 2009;Auttarapong, 2012;Chou & Wang, 2012).Nataghi and Nasrabadi (2014) tried to evaluate structural barriers influencing on exports of rose water and essences of Kashan to United Arabic Emirates.They reported issues associated with information infrastructure, legislative, legal and secure infrastructure, human, educational, cultural and behavioral infrastructure, infrastructure of customs, trade and taxation, internet problem, technical and hardware infrastructure and financial and software infrastructure issues were the most important factors.Mohammadi et al. (2014) determined five packaging factors influencing on export development including communications, infrastructure, awareness, design and technical extraction.Through the implementation of principal component analysis, they reported that all five packing components were effective in export development of food industry.Hosseini et al. (2014) presented a study on the effects of firm and management team's characteristics to develop food industry.The proposed study considered four factors associated with firms and 9 factors, which are related to management team's characteristics in a food industry in Iran.They reported that management knowledge about export market was number one important factor followed by the level of technology used, competitive advantage, believe in being profitable was the last item influencing export activities.Yazdi et al. (2014) presented an empirical investigation to detect important factors influencing exporting herbal supplements.The study determined eight factors including supportive laws and regulations, organizational atmosphere, marketing structure, knowledge oriented, feasibility study, research and development, competitive strategy and partnership strategies influencing on export activities.Nikseresht (2013) considered whether or not improving relationships between countries positively could influence on empowering firms and export capabilities.They also considered whether or not improving national strategies for developing exports positively influences on empowering firms and export capabilities.They reported that empowering small and mid-cap firms could contribute the whole economy through boosting export.Azad et al. (2013) attempted to determine important factors impacting on insurance issued by export guarantee funds.They determined four factors including risk management, customer oriented, quality management and trade management.Rahchamandi and Fallahi (2014) studied the effects of outsourcing logistics on improvement of export activities in minerals firms in Iran.Using structural equation modeling, the study indicated that there had been a meaningful relationship between strategic orientations of exporters against outsourcing third part logistics (3PL) and basic and additional capabilities of 3PL.In addition, there was a meaningful relationship between basic capabilities of 3PL and competitive advantage of exporters but there was not any meaningful relationship between additional capabilities of 3PL and competitive advantage of exporters.Finally, there was a meaningful relationship between competitive advantage of exporters and performance of exports.Villar et al. (2014) investigated the effects of knowledge management on export activities.

The proposed method
This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the role of entry into regional markets in fulfilling brand promise.The study designs two questionnaires, one for measuring brand promise and the other for measuring export capabilities, in Likert scale and distributes it among 250 randomly selected producers who were involved in production and development of various products in city of Tehran, Iran.Fig. 1 demonstrates personal characteristics of the participants.

Gender
Age Years of education

Fig. 1. Personal characteristics of the participants
As we can observe from the results of Fig. 1, most people who participated in our survey were middle-aged male.In addition, they were highly educated since nearly 80% of them had some university educations.The study uses principal component analysis and In addition, Fig. 1 demonstrates the results of Scree plot.According to the results of plot, we may extract seven factors.Moreover, Table 2 demonstrates the results of factors loading along with details of each group.According to the results of Table 2, there are seven main factors influencing on the success of export development including product development, public advocacy, strategic orientation, customer satisfaction, competitive pressures, organizational capabilities and distribution strategies.We have also performed Spearman correlation test between brand promise and these seven factors and Table 3 shows details of our findings.The results of the implementation of Spearman test confirm the effects of five factors including product development, competition, customer satisfaction, organizational capabilities and strategic orientation.However, the effects of distribution channels and government support have not been confirmed.In our survey, organizational capabilities had the highest positive impact followed by product development and strategic orientation.We have performed stepwise regression technique and Table 4 shows the results of our survey.The results of Table 4 have also confirmed the positive effects of organizational capabilities, product development and competition when the level of significance is five percent.

Conclusion
In this paper, we have presented an empirical investigation to study the effects of different factors on brand promise in exporting goods in regional countries in Middle East.The using principle component analysis, the study has extracted seven factors and the implementation of Spearman correlation and stepwise correlation have confirmed that organizational capabilities, product development and competition have maintained positive impacts on brand promise on regional countries surrounded Iran.The results of our study are somehow consistent with other studies accomplished in other countries (Sousa & Bradley, 2008;Stoian et al. 2011;Chi & Sun, 2013).

Table 1
Table 1 demonstrates the results of our survey.The summary of principle component analysis

Table 2
The summary of factors loading

Table 3
The summary of Spearman correlation test

Table 4
The summary of stepwise regression technique