EFFECTIVENESS OF ALTERNATIVE EXPORT PROMOTION STRATEGIES FOR BRANDED FOOD PRODUCTS

This study examines the impact on export sales of various promotional strategies for branded food products in foreign markets. It is an empirical analysis using data obtained from organizations that administer the High Value Export Incentive Program (HVEIP) for branded food products, part of USDA's Targeted Export Assistance (TEA) program and its successor, the Marketing Assistance Program (MAP). To respect the proprietary nature of the data, the identity of individual firms and brand names has been deleted and products have been combined into two groups: (1) consumer ready and (2) intermediate. Economic analysis reveals positive and statistically significant impacts of expenditures on television advertising and advertising in consumer-orientated print media on export sales of consumer ready products, the effect of the latter being somewhat larger. No other promotional strategy reveals a consistent and statistically significant relationship to exports. Channel-orientated strategies seldom showed positive results on export levels for consumer ready products, and consumer-orientated strategies bear no detectable relationship to export levels of intermediate products.