“Application of the marketing mix to the world export of animal products”

Agricultural trade is complicated owing to perishable goods and high requirements for safety and quality, especially by animal products. Intensifying their exports is a major priority in the context of augmenting competitive negotiations and providing global food security to cover a shortage of an animal protein intake. To address such challenges, this study aimed at improving marketing performance necessary for developing the world exports of animal products. The methodological research framework was the Marketing Mix model, which included Product, Price, Place, and Promotion, and was amplified by Innovation. The model components were presented by the average export prices and indicators for Infrastructure, ICT adoption, and Innovation capability evaluated for each exporting country. For testing hypotheses about homo-and heterogeneity of top exporters, this research utilized the single factor Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) technique. The offered approach was applied to the most valuable export segments of poultry, livestock, and dairy world markets. They engaged from 75 to 140 countries and had total export values between USD 3.2 billion and USD 33.2 billion. The study outcomes captured similarities and differences of Price, Place, Promotion, and Innovation components among the First 10, Second 10, and Third 10 ranked ex-porters. Given the found indicators of the top world exporters, the study clarifies prospects and attainable goals on developing exports of animal products at a country level.


INTRODUCTION
An important challenge facing international agriculture is the pressing issue of covering a shortage of food products across countries.It is a complicated task and one of the major focuses of the World Trade Organization (WTO) since its foundation in 1995.Following the WTO Agriculture Agreement, member states have been negotiating the establishment of a fairer and more competitive and predictable trading system, especially concerning market access, domestic support, and export subsidies that can distort agricultural trade and hinder providing food security (The WTO Agriculture Agreement, 2020).Indeed, feeding over 9 billion people by 2050 is a prime challenge for the pairing of agricultural practice and science (Vasylieva, 2018).Future global kilocalories demand implies an additional supply of approximately 60% of agricultural products (Grafton, Daugbjerg, & Qureshi, 2015; Flies, Brook, Blomqvist, & Buettel, 2018).Besides, protein deficiency and nutritional imbalances result in severe human health complications (A.Khan, S. Khan, Jan, & M. Khan, 2017).
Continuing globalization and rising incomes trigger a tangible diversification of food consumption in favor of animal products (Kearney, 2010;Vasylieva, 2019).Specifically, by 2050, consumption of poultry, pork, and cheese is expected to increase by over 35%, 15%, and 25%, respectively, which corresponds to 146, 133, and 65 g daily per capita in the industrial countries.Similar trends are expected to occur in developing countries, where the demand for beef, poultry, pork, eggs, and whole milk would rise by 14%, 52%, 37%, 44%, and 21%, which corresponds to 28,36,59,34, and 141 g daily per capita.
Most of wealthier consumers can and are ready to pay for animal products placed and promoted, according to the quality standards established by the top world exporters.Given the accelerated demand for animal products, the world exporters beyond top 10 must also contribute to expanding market niches and capture their potential economic benefits through the advanced marketing techniques.Therefore, the purpose of this study is to clarify options for improving the marketing performance of globally exported animal products.Specifically, this paper outlines a general "roadmap" for expanding the world exports of animal products by considering which components (Product, Price, Place, and Promotion) and innovations should be developed by countries to keep pace with the top world exporters.

LITERATURE REVIEW
According to the WTO estimations, the world agricultural trade hit the record of USD 1,820 billion in 2018, which was 5% more than the previous year.Nevertheless, trading agricultural goods has its inherent pitfalls, such as its perishable nature, long supply chain, strong requirements to transportation conditions, storage facilities, safety, and quality (Xu, 2015).So far, farming became an initial phase of agriculture, which also encompasses provisioning, processing, marketing, and consuming agricultural goods.A focus on liberating agricultural trade is a shared consensus between the World Trade Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations committed to providing food security on a global scale (Farsund, Daugbjerg, & Langhelle, 2015).To eliminate misconceptions and alleviate discrepancies on the issue, Anderson (2016) explored the evolution of food trade patterns, interface between agricultural prices and food security, navigated trends in policy reforms and prospects for agricultural marketing.That is why all economic tools fostering agricultural trade are invaluable.To a large extent, it refers to agricultural marketing.Consistent with Murugesan and Rajarajan (2016, p. 46), "marketing is the performance of all business activities involved in the flow of goods and services from the point of initial agricultural production until they are in the hands of the ultimate consumer."Stated differently, marketing consolidates with "all the operations that will be used to accelerate the transmission stream of goods from production to consumption to show the ease and speed in sale and distribution work" (Rasouliazar, Perani, & Rashiedpour, 2015, p. 211).Among key benefits of marketing development, they emphasized increasing timely sales for higher prices, as well as augmenting market knowledge and better competition with foreign rivals.
According to Kohls, Uhl, and Hurt (2014), Morgan, Feng, and Whitler (2018), establishing international agricultural trade is more than simply exporting and blending strategic marketing capabilities.Constantinides (2006), Powers and Loyka (2010) identified the Marketing Mix to be the dominant theoretical paradigm and the most applicable practical concept, which successfully underpinned all economic fields and industries, including international trade and agricultural sector.Previously, Leonidou, Katsikeas, and Samiee (2002) synthesized the general model of export performance linking managerial characteristics, organizational factors, environmental forces, export targeting, and the core elements of marketing strategy such as product, pricing, distribution, and promotion.Farris, Bendle, Pfeifer, and Reibstein (2010) featured measuring marketing performance like an undeniable advantage of translating numbers into managerial decisions.Similarly, Katsikeas, Morgan, Leonidou, and Hult (2016) encouraged quantified assessments of outcomes in marketing typed by customer-level, product-market, accounting, and financial performance at historical, present, and future time horizons.However, these recommendations need an accurate specification by industries and areas.
Thus, this review suggests that more work is needed to obtain a better understanding of international agricultural marketing, especially in animal products.The literature also supposes that a quantitative approach to a tailored Marketing Mix model might be an effective means of obtaining more accurate details of marketing opportunities for different countries for developing export of animal products.Given the study aim, this paper contributes to an important gap in the literature.

RESEARCH METHODS AND HYPOTHESES
Dobor (2015) defined the Marketing Mix as a combination of strategies and activities for building an effective agribusiness at the stage of selling goods and services.The classic 4Ps mix merges Product, Price, Place, and Promotion.To achieve this research goal and quantify the Marketing Mix for the agricultural exports, these elements were measured as follows.
The data source for the Product and Price components was FAOStat (2020), which provides a focus on animal products with the most valuable world export markets.The selected indicators for the Price were the average export prices by countries, which mirror the standing of fair and competitive international trade (Ferris, 2005;Norwood & Lusk, 2007).
Other data were from the Global Competitiveness Indices (GCI) computed annually by country by the World Economic Forum (Schwab, 2019) ,, XXX designated the respective av- erage values among the analyzed groups of exporters; • X was the grand mean of the all three exam- ined samples by the given product.
Then, the inter-group difference was calculated like The intra-group difference was computed using the following formula:

RESULTS
This research considered 12 animal products with the most valuable world export markets as of 2018.Namely, the poultry segment consisted of chicken meat, fresh and frozen; chicken meat, canned; and hen eggs, in shell, with export values of USD 21.5 billion, USD 8.7 billion, and USD 3. 5 (Schwab, 2019).
Table 1 showed various engagements of countries in exporting the considered products, which varied between 75 states by pork to 140 states by cheese, whole cow milk.A comparison of the examined export markets also depicted a different magnitude of oligopoly.As can be seen from Table A1 in Appendix, the market shares of top 10 exporters ranged between 64% concerning milk, whole fresh cow and 94% concerning bacon and ham.
Unlike the qualitative results on the Marketing Mix in agriculture by Dobor (2015), the quantitative research findings of testing the set Hypothesis in terms of products and indicators were presented in Tables 2-4 and discussed in the next section.

DISCUSSION
The Overall, poultry export markets appeared to be mostly homogenous, especially by chicken meat, fresh and frozen.Indeed, there were 4 out of 4 conclusions about relatively equal indicators across the exporters' groups.In contrast, livestock and dairy export markets were largely heterogeneous, especially concerning milk, whole fresh cow, so that there were four conclusions about essentially different groups of top exporters.
The next stage of this study explored components' dynamic by the animal products to specify marketing metrics for the agricultural sphere (Farris, Bendle, Pfeifer, & Reibstein, 2010).According to Morgan, Feng, and Whitler (2018), the relevant research finding was that Top exporters of chick-

Average among ten exporters F-ratio P-value Conclusion First
Second Third Cheese, whole cow milk en meat, fresh and frozen, had uniform strong requirements in their market environment.On average, the First 10 poultry exporters relied on the lowest prices, better-developed Infrastructure, and higher Innovation capability.Meanwhile, the Third 10 group endeavored to benefit from advanced Promotion via ICT adoption.The First 10 exporters of chicken meat, canned, and hen eggs, had essential advantages through Innovation capability.The latter ones also gained from the advanced Infrastructure compared to the Second and Third top 10 exporters (see Table 2).
The First 10 exporters of cattle meat, carcass had significant priorities in the Place and Innovation components, offsetting their high prices.At the same time, the Third 10 group strived to compete through low average prices explained by Ferris (2005).The Second 10 exporters of beef and veal, boneless, focused their marketing efforts on the Infrastructure and Innovation capability.The corresponding Third 10 group, as before, shrank the prices.The First 10 exporters of bacon and ham had a holistic leadership.In light of it, any expectations on foreseeable shifts here seem to be unrealistic.Despite high prices, the First 10 exporters of pig meat, sausages had unconditional advantages over rivals in the Place, Promotion, and Innovation components.The Second and Third 10 groups kept the marketing status quo since their indicators were hardly distinguishable.The Third 10 exporters of pork moved to promote cheap products.However, the standing of the First 10 exporters looked to be quiet robust owing to the advanced Infrastructure and vast Innovation capability (see Table 3).
The screening provided evidence that the poor indicators of the marketing performance did not allow the Third 10 exporters of cheese, whole cow milk, to compete with the stronger groups.Besides, the respective First 10 group had practically max-imum average scores by the Infrastructure, ICT adoption, and Innovation capability compared to the rest 11 analyzed agricultural markets.Like in the case of pig meat, sausages, the First 10 exporters of butter, cow milk compensated their high prices through the best market accomplishments concerning the Place, Promotion, and Innovation capability agreed with the recommended performance outcomes in marketing by Katsikeas, Morgan, Leonidou, and Hult (2016).In contrast, the Second 10 exporters of milk, whole dried entirely overtook the current leaders and were eager to shift positions.The First 10 exporters of milk, whole fresh cow, had a justified leadership.Nevertheless, as proof of unorthodox patterns by Norwood and Lusk (2007), even poor pillar indicators of the Third 10 exporters, especially Uganda, South Africa, Thailand, Iran, Costa Rica, and Pakistan, did not deteriorate their high export prices because of favorable geographical location for delivering perishable fresh milk (see Table 4).
The goal indicators of the top world exporters enable to illuminate the plausible export improvements by country.For example, in Ukraine, the most pessimistic scenario happened to be in exporting pig meat, sausages, as well as bacon and ham.Ukrainian ranks were only 57 and 60 that were caused by flaws in processing and brand marketing.However, at ranks 12 (twice) and 13, Ukrainian exporters achieved the most optimistic results for chicken meat, fresh and frozen; hen eggs in shell; and butter, cow milk.To continue this status quo and prevent foregone opportunities, it is mandatory to enhance the marketing Infrastructure, ICT adoption, and Innovation capability from the current scores of 70, 52, and 40 up to the average levels in the corresponding Second 10 export groups.The ways to tackle this issue are extremely advisable given a sharp imbalance between Ukrainian exports of crop and animal products.

CONCLUSION
The main research outcome was an Innovative Marketing Mix model proposed for the international trade of animal products in order to quantify its ongoing performance by the Price, Place, Promotion, and Innovation components and to set goals on further export development.The single factor ANOVA technique was appropriate for evaluating and comparing marketing performance by animal products.The study revealed that the First, Second, and Third top 10 exporters demonstrated different priorities in reaching competitive advantages in the global markets of poultry, livestock, and dairy products.However, the elaborated uniform approach provided their objective numerical measures based on the average export prices by countries and the Global Competitiveness Indices such as the Pillars of Infrastructure, ICT adoption, and Innovation capability.Milk, whole fresh cow, and the Innovation component were identified to be the most heterogeneous.In contrast, chicken meat, fresh and frozen, as well as the Promotion, appeared to be the most homogeneous among the analyzed animal products and model components.
To face challenges of market fluctuations, the obtained conclusions need regular updating.On the one hand, given the inputs accessible from the official data sources, it is not a sticking point.On the other hand, consistent recalculations maintain a proper insight on the dynamics of marketing performance and progress in increasing the world export of the most demanded animal products.
dfB SSW dfW −= An alpha level to reject the hypotheses amounted to typical 10%, i.e., a boundary p-value was 0the Alternative Hypothesis in favor of homogeneity of the top world exporters by the explored indicator.An inequality Fcritical Ratio F > − confirmed rejecting the Null Hypothesis caused by revealed heterogeneity of the top world exporters by the considered model component applied to the given animal product.
analytical research findings based on the fulfilled calculations and summarized results by Powers and Loyka (2010) were as follows.According to Tables 2-4, rejections of the Alternative Hypothesis by the model components detected that Prices and Promotions were mostly homogeneous for exports of 7 and 9 products.On the contrary, rejections of the Null Hypothesis determined the Place and Innovation components to be mostly heterogeneous for exports of 9 and 11 products.According to Christopher and Peck (2015), the Infrastructure level appeared to be the most demanding among the observed pillar indicators and ranged between 71 and 88 across the groups of top exporters.Consistent with Babenko, Perevozova, Mandych, Kvyatko, Maliy, and Mykolenko (2019b), the ICT adoption level demonstrated an average fluctuation from 60 to 76.As distinct from expectations of Tomich, Lidder, Coley, Gollin, et al. (2019), the Innovation capability occurred to be the least demanding among the observed pillar indicators and ranged between 44 and 74.

Table 1 .
Characteristics to input dataSource: Composed by the authors.

Table 2 .
ANOVA output over poultry export marketsSource: Computed by the authors.

Table 3 .
ANOVA output over livestock export markets Source: Computed by the authors.

Table 4 .
ANOVA output over dairy export marketsSource: Computed by the authors.