the influential factors on the choice of sales channel by citrus producers in mazandaran

one of the farmers' marketing decisions is how to sell their products to the market. they sell their products in different ways, for example pre-sell, local dealers and wholesalers,. this paper aims at investigating citrus distribution channels and evaluation of factors affecting the choice of each channels by mazandaran ‘s producers. the data was collected by simple random sampling method. 252 farmers from 15 cities were interviewed in 2011. in order to conduct the study, the method of three-layer nested logit model was used. the estimated results showed that the variables of the garden distance from nearest town, gardener experience, selling time, marketing costs, product type and dominant style of selling in the region are crucial factors in selecting the distribution channel. each of these variables had different effect on selecting in each selling channels, nevertheless, the variables of selling time and product type were of a greater importance.