Active participation in international trade is a must for the governments and business of today's rapidly changing world. This situation enforces the need to have extensive information on market potential estimation methods. Special factors related to international markets such as data deficiency and unexpected data needs make the market assessment task a much more difficult and complicated issue.

In this study, first, an attempt is made to have a compact inventory of existing international forecasting techniques. Different classification schemes from the literature are presented. In order to evaluate the available international forecasting techniques, nine evaluative factors have been defined and used in an overall evaluation attempt. These efforts showed that none of the existing techniques are very applicable and successful in international markets.

Second, Multiple Factor Technique is presented as a low-cost, preliminary market assessment technique that can be utilized in international markets. The mechanics of the technique and it's rationale are discussed with a brief developmental background. The technique is tested by using different number of variables with unweighted and weighted market potential indices. The United States is chosen as the reference market while the United Kingdom is the target market. A durable consumer good (VCR) and a non-durable consumer good (beer) are used to test the Multiple Factor Technique with ten years (1974-1983) data.

Multiple Factor Technique seem to be more accurate with non-durable products than with durable products. Meanwhile, this author believes that the results may have something to do with the maturity of both reference and target markets. For example, if the target country is immature but the reference country mature, MFT might be effective for future market potential estimates.

Furthermore, a Multiple Factor Technique based short term forecasting attempt shows that the technique is as much applicable as it is for a market assessment technique. Future studies will improve our understanding as well as our ability to apply the Multiple Factor Technique.