Factors affecting ethiopian flower companies’ export performance: case of around addis ababa city flower farms

The study was conducted on the factors that affect Ethiopian flower companies’ export performance which are located around Addis Ababa. Accordingly, in order to achieve the overall objective of the study, the researchers selected the flower companies through convenience sampling and distributed questionnaires for the Marketing, Production and General Managers through judgmental sampling which was based on their field of study or duty. Therefore, among 80 flower companies which are located in different region of Ethiopia, the questionnaires distributed to 120 Marketing, Production and General Managers of 40 flower companies. The data collected through questionnaires were analyzed quantitatively through descriptive ways. Whereas, those data collected through open ended and secondary data were analyzed their contents through qualitative approach. From the data analysis, the result of the study shows that in Ethiopia, the factors that contribute for the growth of flower export performance include: attractive climate, the availability of natural resource like water, incentives provided by the government like land, good investment laws, and Ethiopia proximity to the global market, efficient Ethiopian airlines and the availability of abundant and cheap labor force. However, untrained labor, shortage of finance, high cost of production, expensive air freight cost, market limitation, price fluctuation, short loan payment period, poor packaging, and flower diseases are some of the factors that negatively affect growth of flower export. Therefore, the owners need to train the employees on overall activities, expand their markets to the current developed countries, get loan from importers or organize exporters to open their saving account jointly from their income and try to produce inputs locally in order to improve the selected Ethiopian flower companies’ export performance.