Exporting opportunities and challenges from Sweden to Iran. : -A multiple case study of Ericsson, Volvo, Scania and Electrolux.

Sammanfattning: Today’s market place is more aggressively competitive than ever, large international companies are actively exporting goods to foreign countries in order to expand their market shares. The exporting process from developed countries to emerging markets such as developing countries is challenging than ever, as a result, scholars in international marketing and business have called for further research concerning this area.In this thesis the author is exploring the process of export between Swedish large B2B companies to Iranian market in order to identify the export barriers and solutions to overcome these barriers.The author first conducted literature reviews in the context of external and internal export barriers. Likewise, from the literature review a conceptual model was framed and primary data was gathered in the form of multiple case studies from Ericsson, Scania, Electrolux and Volvo (truck division). Moreover, the author conducted one-to-one semi-structured interviews with ten participants from the four companies and found remarkable results.All the cases showed that, institutional barriers in political and regulatory settings are problematic when exporting to Iran due to the sanctions. Moreover, the companies are facing challenges regarding uncertainty and financial transactions. Likewise, it is also witnessed that companies find the process of finding forwarders challenging. Lastly, elements such as keeping up to date with sufficient knowledge (knowledge barriers) regarding Iran and production capacity (large order volumes that are hard to handle by the firm) also caused export barriers for the companies.In order to overcome the barriers companies have to do the following; Working with flexibility through the local dealers and establishing close relationship with the partners and forwarders, following the EU rules and regulations, educating the employees regarding the hosting country, establishing close relations with the governmental sector.