An Approach For Selection Of International Market Entry Mode Based On AHP

With the development of economic globalization, firms are more and more being confronted with challenges of international market competition. It is the international operation that has become the indispensable choke for the firms to grow. White in the process of internationalization, firms have to work out the correct decision-making of many problems such as how to choose target market, how to enter the international market and the speed of international expansion. In these problems, the selection of international market entry mode is one of the most important problems. There is much difference in variety of entry modes and appropriate entry mode has great influence on the benefit of firms. So how to choose an appropriate entry mode in international market becomes a difficult problem in the field of international operation.This paper uses analytic hierarchy process (AHP) to study this problem, which is the method for solving problems having multiple criteria. It first analyses the factors that affect the international market entry modes, and analyses how to select the criteria and their indicators. Then, it combines the uncertainty of external factors with the AHP to form the AHP based on uncertain circumstances, which is used to select the most appropriate international market entry mode. Lastly, the paper uses a case to analyses a firm how to use the AHP based on uncertain circumstances to select the most appropriate international market entry mode. The analytical result of the case is consistent with the fact. Meanwhile, it also proves that the AHP based on uncertain circumstances is a practical decision-making method for choosing the most appropriate international market entry mode for firms.