Identifying the challenges facing Iran's automobile industry in the conditions of the liberalization of automobile imports with the approach of gaining a competitive advantage (Case study: SAIPA Automotive Group)

The general purpose of the current research is to identify the challenges facing the Iranian automobile industry in the conditions of the liberalization of automobile imports with the approach of gaining a competitive advantage in Saipa Company. To identify these challenges, Hosseini's model (2013) was considered as a theoretical framework. The statistical population of this research is industrial and academic experts and SAIPA automotive group, considering that the number of identified factors is 29 indicators, a total of 116 people are needed. In order to collect information, the questionnaire created by the researcher on the challenges of importing cars and the standard questionnaire for obtaining competitive advantage by Hosseini (2013) were used. To identify the challenges facing Iran's automotive industry, the exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis technique was used, and to prioritize the challenges, the Friedman test was used with SPss and SMART PLS software. The results of scale reliability and exploratory factor analysis show that out of the 29 identified primary causes of the challenges facing Iran's automotive industry, 26 factors are identified and in six categories, the challenge of cooperation and technology learning, the challenge of competitive power, the challenge of growth and development, the challenge of policy making in The company, the customer behavior challenge, the customer service challenge of segmentation, as well as the result of the PLS software test showed that import challenges are related to gaining competitive advantage. On the other hand, according to Friedman's test, the challenge of cooperation and learning technology has the most impact and the challenge of customer service has the least impact on Iran's automobile industry in the conditions of automobile import liberalization.