AUTHOR
Lerås, Jenny; Wicksén, Sofia

DATE
2003-03-11

DEPARTMENT
Business Administration and Social Sciences / Industrial Marketing

SUMMARY
The purpose of this thesis was to describe how companies establish their products on the foreign market with the help of distributors. For this reason we developed three research questions: Why are companies using distributors instead of agents? How do companies choose distributors when using direct export? How do companies motivate their distributors when using direct export? To answer these questions we used theories that were empirically tested through a case study of the company Liko in Norrbotten. We carried out three interviews with employees knowledgeable in the field. From the interviews we drew the conclusion that companies put a lot of effort into choosing and motivating their distributors. Our case study therefore supported most of the theories. However, we found that companies selling complex products may also benefit from using distributors as well as agents if the distributors have sufficient knowledge in the product field.

ISSN 1404-5508 / ISRN LTU-SHU-EX--03/070--SE / NR 2003:070