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At the time of entering to the new millennium, changes are occuring with great speed. Today is different from yesterday and tomorow will be different from today. Successful companies, therefore, will be forced to pay more attention to three definite points: extention of globalization, amazing progress of technology, and beginning of world disorder in economy and trade. Recently, marketing models have been used in order to organize the complicated issues in rivalry environment so as to enable us to think through a simple method and to take more effective decisions. This article tries to conceptualize and test a model of marketing for Persian carpet export as one of the most important export items of the country. A conceptual model of research has been designed and offered based on relevant the principles and theories and through using the views and ideas of the experts and managers of the art and industry of Persian carpet. On this basis, a questionnaire was designed to evaluate the viewpoints of four statistical groups including governmental organizations, producers, exporters, traders and retailers of the Persian carpet. The research findings show a meaningful difference in the relationship and the effects of the model ingredients. The finding of this study provide a basis for policy and decision makers in export marketing especially for carpet industry.

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Persian carpet weaving is one of Iran’s most famous industries that has attracted the world’s attention to Persian arts through the centuries. What above all, have given prominence to Persian carpet as a beautiful work of art are the pattern and its composition in a two-dimensional space. The diversity of patterns, use of deep and beautiful colors, good composition, harmony of colors, delicate and poetic composition are among the most outstanding features of Persian carpet. Industrial advancement and development of transportation in the 19th century led the western explorers to travel eastward making them acquainted with the cultural heritage of these civilizations. William Morris, the leading thinker and artist of the British Arts and Crafts Movement is among the first to conduct a research on Persian carpet’s patterns and designs. In this paper, we are proposing a semiotic approach to the transaction between Persian artists who made beautiful and ever-lasting carpet designs and William Morris as a pioneer of Pre-Modern Movements in Europe, who studied and recognized the underlying principles of Persian art (mostly carpet), and applied them in a creative way to his own remarkable hand-made designs.

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The rich diversity of Persian carpets is a symbol of different cultures and traditions in this country. To ensure sustainability of the Handmade Carpet Industry Knowledge and Innovation System (HCIKIS), attention should be paid to the transformative approach that pursues holistic transformation in the production and consumption systems. The present study aimed to identify Formal Transformation Institutions (FTIs), classify them into main categories, and analyze them based on the production step, approval date, institution type, and geographical area of approval. Based on the results, there were 316 Formal Institutions (FIs) in the Handmade Carpet Industry (HCI). By open coding, 372 concepts were extracted from 509 concepts derived from different FTIs. Based on the axial coding, the FIs were divided into six initial categories of “carpet authority”, “carpet sales and maintenance inside Iran”, “handmade carpet exports and imports”, “carpet production infrastructure”, “handmade carpet production”, and “sanitary-therapeutic category”. At the next step, the matrix of the main categories based on different production steps was drawn. Among the main categories, the highest frequency was related to the category of “carpet production infrastructure” and the subcategory of “financial supply of carpet”. Although there are many FIs that support production, carpet weavers, as the main people involved in production, have received minimum supports during their working years due to unawareness of supports and loan conditions.