Target Market Selection for Agricultural Products in International Markets Using Fuzzy AHP And Fuzzy COPRAS MCDM Techniques

Making the right decisions in the process of selecting target markets for agricultural products in international marketing can help reduce the negativities in the complex and costly process. The main purpose of the study is to rank and evaluate alternatives in target market selection for agricultural products in the international markets by using fuzzy AHP and fuzzy COPRAS techniques. Multi criteria decision making (MCDM) methods are widely used in solving target market selection problems. In this study, the importance levels and weights of the evaluation criteria of political environment, economic environment, social environment and technological environment (PEST) were measured by the fuzzy AHP method. The criteria that are important for target market selection were evaluated by taking expert opinions, the uncertain and uncertain opinions of the experts were modeled with the fuzzy AHP approach and the weights of the criteria were determined. Among the PEST criteria, economic factors (EF) have the most weight. Then, alternative rankings were obtained with the fuzzy COPRAS method. Using the criterion weights found with fuzzy AHP, the alternatives of the 6 importing countries with the highest share in the processed agricultural products market were listed with the fuzzy COPRAS method. As a result of listing the alternatives, it is seen that the European Union alternative comes first in choosing the target market for processed agricultural products. This study provides a resource for decision makers to make decisions regarding target market selection of agricultural products in international markets.