Foreign markets expansion for air medical transport business

Abstract

Air medical transport has gained increasing popularity in modern society. However, the global market of this industry has not been fully explored either in theory or in practice. This research assesses the medical aviation market and identifies the most suitable regions for a private air transport company to expand its business on a global scale. We combine the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and the grey number (GN) theorem to analyse the potential foreign market. Compared with conventional methods, the proposed model mitigates the adverse effects of uncertainty while providing a practical approach that considers management’s subjective judgements. The integrated model is comprehensive and flexible for assessing the demand for air medical service in different parts of the world. In addition to the air jet service industry, the GN-AHP model can be generalised to evaluate many other markets and industries.

Keywords:

• Location
• global market expansion
• uncertain environment
• analytic hierarchy process
• grey number
• multi-criteria decision-making