CONTENTS

Export Promotion and Import Demand for U.S. Red Meat in Selected Pacific Rim Countries

Editor's Notes

Assessing the Effectiveness of MPP Meat Advertising and Promotion in the Japanese Market

Director’s Corner

Next Meeting

NEC-63 Fall Meeting October 4-6, 1998 Tempe, Arizona Commodities as Consumer Products: What Can Commodity Promotion Evaluation Learn from Corporate America?

Director's Corner

by Harry M. Kaiser

The theme of this issue of NICPRE Quarterly is export promotion. Export promotion is becoming increasingly important with the liberalization of trade barriers throughout the world. U.S. farmers and growers have responded by becoming even more competitive from a cost of production aspect. However, it is also essential for the competitive viability of U.S. agriculture not to neglect the demand-side of our international markets. This is where non-price, export promotion of U.S. commodities plays an important role. A natural question that arises is: are these programs effective in increasing the demand for U.S. products?

Countries in the Pacific Rim represent a crucial market for U.S. agricultural commodities. As such, the Foreign Agricultural Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture has devoted a significant investment of non-price export promotion dollars to these countries. The success of these programs in this region, as measured by previous economic impact research (including the two featured here) are somewhat mixed. Hopefully, policy makers will look carefully at the results of this research in order to formulate new policies that better maximize the return on investment from the programs.

Given its importance, NICPRE has planned continued research projects on export promotion. For example, one of the new sponsored research projects by NICPRE will compare the effectiveness of price vs. non-price export promotion of U.S. products. The answer to this research issue is particularly important since both non-price and price promotion strategies are commonly used, but their relative effectiveness has not been studied. We will report the results of this study in a future issue of NICPRE Quarterly.