The 2009 World Market Forecasts for Imported Natural Sponges of Animal Origin

This report was created for strategic planners, international marketing executives and export managers whose primary concern is the world market for natural sponges of animal origin. With the globalization of this market, managers can no longer be contented with a local view. Nor can managers be contented with out-of-date statistics that appear several years after the fact. I have developed a methodology, based on macroeconomic and trade models, to estimate the market for natural sponges of animal origin for those firms serving the world via exports and foreign direct investment. It does so for the current year based on a variety of key historical indicators and econometric models. In what follows, this report begins by summarizing the world exporter's market for natural sponges of animal origin. The total level of exports on a worldwide basis is based on a model that aggregates across over 150 key country markets and projects these to the current year. From there, each country represents a percent of the world market. This market is served from a number of competitive countries of origin. Based on supply-side dynamics, market shares by country of origin are then calculated across each country market. These shares lead to a volume of import values for each country and are aggregated to regional and world totals. In doing so, we are able to obtain maximum likelihood estimates of both the value of each market and the shares that competitors (countries serving that market) are likely to receive this year. From these figures, world rankings are calculated to allow managers to prioritize markets. In this way, all the figures provided in this report are forecasts that can be combined with internal information for strategic planning purposes.