An Investigation on Determining The Most Frequently Used Methods of Finding Clients in Export

Abstract

Companies use various methods to export. With this article, the most frequently preferred method of finding customers in the global market by the companies who want to export was investigated. A questionnaire was applied on SMEs in İzmir by using AHP method in the analysis. Consequently, it was found that the most frequently used methods of finding customers are trade fairs (%29,2), search engines including Google Adwords (%28,2), business men incorporations (%15) and e-market places (%14,5). In choosing these methods, 10 criteria including profitability, productivity, time, cost, effort, easiness, experience, trust, feedback speed and availability were considered. For these techniques, it was concluded that the criteria that SMEs give most importance to are safety of the technique (%32,5); cost of the technique (%21,6); and profitability (17,4). With the help of these results, it is aimed to create awareness about strategies of companies for finding customers in the international market.