Planning marketing channels: case of olive oil agribusiness in Portugal

Marketing channels play an important role in the competitiveness of agribusiness value chains. Thus, this paper proposes a model for planning marketing channels in agribusiness that also considers transaction costs. This model is developed in two steps, diagnostic and decision, and is applied to the olive oil agribusiness in Portugal. The diagnostic step includes analysis of the agribusiness chain value, marketing channels, transaction characteristics, and institutional environment. The decision step fits the information from the diagnostic into a qualitative cost–benefit analysis, based on a multi-criteria problem of ordering preferences.