Export Marketing Practices, Problems and Prospects of Oromia Coffee Farmers? Cooperative Union. In Ethiopia

The study was conducted on export marketing practices, problems and prospective of oromia coffee farmers cooperative union in Ethiopia. The union is the biggest coffee union in the country. The objective of the study was to assess the export marketing practices, problem and prospective oromia coffee farmers? cooperative union (OCFCU). The specific objectives of this study are to assess the general export marketing practices followed by sampled cooperatives, to identify the key factors for the success of exporting coffee through cooperatives and to study the problems facing much of export markets. For this study, data were collected through semi structured questionnaire, interview and focus group discussion. The source of the information were the respondents of the primary cooperatives societies that were affiliated to the union, board of directors, general manager of union and key informants. For the study purpose, eight primary cooperative societies affiliated to the union were selected based on purposive sampling through lottery method. In the data analysis method, the author used the descriptive analysis and multiple linear regression analysis. As a result, almost all the coffee marketing cooperatives in the study area were performing their business inefficiently. For the last five years the supply of coffee by members to the union was triple on and trickle down due to several factors like weather condition, coffee disease, private coffee traders intervention and absence of loyalty among individual members which makes supply of coffee volume was insignificant. Union?s export volume increases from year to year except in 2010 in which coffee sale amount is decreased from the previous trend. However, the sale value in birr was the highest in the year. The result of the study also shows that the factors which influence union?s export performances are competition, long duration of export document process, coffee quality, export barrier from country destinations, delay in transportation, communication barrier, lack of international market knowledge, export administrative procedures, unofficial fee in export documents processing, incapable to supply coffee in time by members, private traders intervention and delay of shipping. The regression model analysis revealed that, analysis resulted in an R2 =0 .293 suggesting that the six factors ?cooperative-specific characteristics, export marketing strategy, competition, management commitment, export market characteristics and product characteristics? together explained 29.3 percent of the variation in the export marketing performance of oromia coffee farmers? cooperative union OCFCU as explanatory variables.