Building Long-Term Buyer-Seller Relationships in Food Chains

Building on the extent literature of buyer-seller relationships, we develop a model that describes the relationship building process. Starting from the suppliers offer quality, we demonstrate how relational satisfaction leads to trust and the customers desire to maintain the relationship. These variables are examined in relation to the situational factors (dependence and the exchange partners willingness to make idiosyncratic investments).Industrial Organization,

PRICE-QUALITY RELATIONSHIPS IN THE FRESH PRODUCE INDUSTRY IN BALI

As the number of tourist arrivals in Bali (Indonesia) continues to increase, a greater number of opportunities are emerging for local farmers to expand production to meet the increasing demand for food. While there are various production and marketing constraints which limit the ability of small farmers to individually meet the hotels quality specifications, this paper demonstrates how collector agents and distributors are able to assemble sufficient produce to meet the quality specifications imposed by the high class hotels. Intense competition between the many distributors for a share of the hotels patronage has resulted in a significant reduction in price, so much so, that the second grade produce which fails to meet the specifications of the high class hotels, often achieves a higher price in the wet market. Consequently, the small, lower class hotels, who purchase the majority of fresh produce they require from the wet market, experience much greater problems with both variable product quality and price. Not unexpectedly, under the current system of marketing, there are no financial incentives to encourage local farmers to improve product quality.Demand and Price Analysis,

Modelling buyer-seller relationships in agribusiness in South East Asia

A model of buyer-seller relationships is developed to examine the nature of the long-term relationships between Filipino potato farmers and their seed suppliers. Relational satisfaction is derived from the seed supplier's offer quality (seed quality, delivery intent and competitive price), relationship specific investments (adaptions, communication, education and training and reciprocal buying) and a reduction in uncertainty in the seed supply market. However, rather than satisfaction leading to trust, satisfaction has a more direct impact on a potato farmer's desire to maintain a long-term relationship. Nevertheless, in the absence of a formal seed certification system and the nature of the long-term credit arrangements that often exist between farmers and seed suppliers, including reciprocal purchasing arrangements, trust remains a key relationship building variable. Fortuitously, seed suppliers have an opportunity to build trust with potato farmers through making relationship specific investments

Measures and measurement: Process and practise

Even although case studies remain one of the most widely utilised approaches in the study of industrial markets, debate continues about the apparent lack of any consistency in the way the case study method is applied. While acknowledging the shortcomings, this paper highlights the strengths and celebrates the diversity of the case study approach in developing and testing theory. Seven outstanding cases, selected from the Fourth Meeting of the IMP Group in Asia are presented

Why dissatisfied customers still desire long-term relationships

A model of long-term relationships between potato farmers and their seed suppliers in the highlands of the Northern Phillipines reveals that while farmers are generally dissatisfied with the nature of their relationship with their most preferred seed supplier, they nevertheless seek to maintain that relationship. The desire to maintain the relationship is derived directly from the seed supplier's offer quality and the various commitments the preferred seed supplier makes to share the risks of growing potatoes in a highly unpredictable environment. The farmer's dissatisfaction is derived primarily from the seed supplier's inability to deliver good quality seed cost effectively and to adequately reward the farmer for their efforts in growing and harvesting the potato crop

The universality of trust?

Emperical evidence is presented which suggests that trust is more important in facilitating exchange in transitional economies than industrial economies. Furthermore, the various item measures that have been employed to evaluate trust in Europe, North America, Australia and Japan, fail to accurately describe the construct among small farmers in a developing country. While further studies are necessary to develop a more robust measure of trust, in the context of small business, trust between organisations and individual's is difficult to differentiate

Relational quality: further evidence of a single higher order construct in an industrial market

While there is some evidence for a single, higher order construct which captures satisfaction and trust, evidence of its existence in industrial markets remains scant and inconclusive. However, in the context of small, family owned businesses, where consumer behaviour and industrial purchasing behaviour overlap, a single construct may be a better predictor of a market intermediary's relational building activities. Two rival models are compared which, given the high degree of correlation between satisfaction and trust, support the existence of a single satisfaction/trust construct