Supply chain performance : the role of regional markets

Article history: Received January 2, 2015 Received in revised format 6 February 2015 Accepted 5 March 2015 Available online March 12 2015 This paper investigates the role of exports in the regional markets on the performance of supply chain. The study first determines critical variables affecting exports for entering into the regional markets and then measures the effects of these variables on the effectiveness of supply chain performance. The study uses two questionnaires, one for measuring the effects of various factors on export development and the other for measuring supply chain performance in Likert scale. Cronbach alpha for the mentioned questionnaires were calculated as 0.84 and 0.78, respectively. The population of the survey includes all small and medium enterprises active in city of Tehran, Iran and the study selects a sample of 250 people as a sample size. Using factor analysis, the study has determined seven factors including product development, government support, strategic orientation, customer satisfaction, competitive pressures, organizational capability and distribution strategies for entry into regional markets. In addition, the implementation of structural equation modeling has disclosed that product development and distribution strategies maintained the highest impact on export activities. Growing Science Ltd. All rights reserved. 5 © 201


Introduction
During the past few decades, many countries have boosted their economy by concentrating on development of new products to supply in international market.There are always different challenges on supplying products in other countries such as competition with existing domestic competitors.Supply chain management is one of the most important issues for development of market in other countries.Haluk Köksal and Özgül (2010) determined the export competitive advantage differences between high-and low-performing firms in Turkey by analyzing the firms' export resources, export skills, and export competitive advantages to detect the discrimination effects of each variable.They reported that the brand image, product quality, and cost of goods sold in the export markets were the most important competitive advantage factors leading to success in the export markets.In addition, in their study, the ability to understand consumers' requirements, and developing strong relationships with consumers in the marketplace were also important skills associated with success in the export markets.
During the past few years, there have been some efforts on expediting export development.Pilevari (2009), for instance, presented a model of agility in supply chain based expert systems.Vahid et al. (2013) evaluated the relationship between competitive advantage and export performance in a case study of Iranian firms exporting biotech products.Pilevari (2009) presented a model of agility in supply chain based expert systems.

The proposed study
This paper investigates the role of exports in the regional markets on the performance of supply chain.In other words, the study first determines critical variables affecting exports for entering the regional markets and then measures the effects of these variables on the effectiveness of supply chain performance.The study uses two questionnaires, one for measuring the effects of various factors on export development and the other for measuring supply chain performance in Likert scale.Table 1 demonstrates the factors along with the sources.Cronbach alpha for the mentioned questionnaires were calculated as 0.84 and 0.78, respectively.The population of the survey includes all small and medium enterprises active in city of Tehran, Iran and the study selects a sample of 250 people as a sample size.To find out more about the factors associated with development of supply chain and export we have reviewed existing literature as well as interviewing some experts.Fig. 1 demonstrates personal characteristics of the participants.

Gender
Years of education Age

Fig. 1. Personal characteristics of the participants
As we can observe from the results of Fig. 1, 84% of the participants were male, 80% of them maintained some university education and they were mostly middle aged people.The proposed study has applied factor analysis and KMO test, which represents nearly 79% of the changes.Table 2 shows details of the preliminary results of factor analysis.In addition, Fig. 2 shows the results of Scree plot.  2 and Fig. 2, there are seven factors including product development, government support, strategic orientation, customer satisfaction, competitive pressures, organizational capability and distribution strategies for entry into regional markets.Table 3 presents details of Pearson correlation test between supply chain management and the seven factors.According to the results of Table 3, product development maintains the highest impact on development of regional market followed by organizational capabilities and distribution strategies.In this survey, we have built a model to provide more investigation between the supply chain components and export development in regional market structural equation modeling (SEM) and Fig. 3 demonstrates the results of our survey.In addition, Table 4 shows details of statistical observations on SEM implementation.

Table 4
The summary of statistics on SEM implementation The results of Table 4 indicate that all statistics were within acceptable levels and we can therefore examine the effects of six variables.Table 5 presents the summary of SEM implementation.

Discussion and conclusion
According to the results of Table 5, product development influences the most on SCM effectiveness followed by distribution channels, organizational capabilities, customer satisfaction, competitive pressure and strategic orientation.In general, the components of the supply chain must have full information about the final product and the process of production and distribution to increase the efficiency of the value chain and supply chain performance with prevailing market conditions and the orientation the market.There is no doubt that customer satisfaction occurs only when there are some good cooperation among the members of supply chain.On the other hand, customer satisfaction can yield long-term influence on supply chain efficiency and effectiveness of its components.Overall, customer satisfaction and supply chain performance relationship is bidirectional.In our survey, different components of organizational capabilities, market research, management's commitment to exporting, human resources, positively influence on supply chain performance.

Fig. 3 .
Fig. 3.The results of standard coefficients on SEM implementation

Table 1
The summary of factors influencing development of supply chain effectiveness and export development

Table 2
The summary of the results of Factor analysis

Table 3
The summary of factors Pearson correlation test between supply chain management and export

Table 5
The summary of the results of SEM implementation