Customer's perceptions of business units within an agricultural business in South Africa

[摘要] English: The benefits that customer relationship management bring forth are critical factors suchas customer satisfaction and loyalty Customer satisfaction is a well-researched subjectin Management and has been referred to as God, King and beyond. Companies aredependent on customer satisfaction and/or positive customer perceptions in order tosurvive, in that the existence and growth of companies depend on customers' repeatedand increased purchases due to positive feelings towards the company. Also, customersatisfaction may increase the good reputation of a company and lead to positive wordof-mouth advertising that may in turn bring in new customers.Agricultural businesses are an important vehicle of agriculture growth in South Africa;however, research on customer satisfaction among agricultural business customers isscarce. Agricultural businesses (previously known as cooperatives) were establishedon the notion that through cooperation between the various farmers, they could obtainbetter services and products at reduced prices that would add value to the farmer onhis farm (farmer-centred). Cooperatives were a viable business form until 1996, whenthe Marketing Control Board and subsidised interest rates were abolished. The majorityof the agricultural cooperatives were converted to investor-oriented firms (IOFs), thathad the primary goals of being profitable and maintaining a valuable share price(corporate-centred). Agricultural businesses, however, are complex due to the fact thatthe customers of an agricultural business are in most cases also the shareholders ofthe company. Also, agricultural businesses serve a niche market (farmers) and therelationship between the organisation and its customers differs from that of otherindustries.Traditional customer satisfaction research has focussed on using the SERVQUALmethod, which in effect only tests service quality. This study aims to simplify themeasuring instrument, but also add other drivers of customer satisfaction; namely,satisfaction concerning price, product, personnel, service and management. Theagricultural business consists of various business units that are managed as smallerbusinesses, which all form part of the larger agricultural 'umbrella company. It is, thus, the primary objective of this study to determine the relationship between the drivers ofcustomer satisfaction (price, product, service, personnel and management) of thevarious business units and link it to the profitability of these units; and to determine theimpact of these variables on the customer satisfaction with the company.Secondary empirical objectives include determining which of the drivers of customersatisfaction have the biggest impact on customer satisfaction of the overall company;determining which of the business units have the biggest impact on overall satisfaction;determining if the frequency of the use of the different business units affect the overallsatisfaction of the agricultural business and lastly, determining whether the perceptionof performance by customers of the business units has an influence on profitability.The study was of a quantitative nature, making use of mailed questionnaires sent to thetotal population, that is, members of a major agricultural business in Central SouthAfrica that provide more than R100 000 in business to the agricultural business. A totalof 963 questionnaires were sent out and 345 useable questionnaires were returned,making the response rate 35.8% of the total population.The main results indicated that satisfaction concerning retail shops, insurance andmechanisation (workshops) have a statistically significant relationship with overallcustomer satisfaction, which indicates that in order to increase overall customersatisfaction, satisfaction with these three business units should be looked at first.Product, service and satisfaction concerning management, as drivers of customersatisfaction, all have a statistically significant influence on overall customer satisfaction.Also, when the various drivers inherent in the various business units were testedagainst overall customer satisfaction, the results indicated that there were twosignificant drivers inherent in a business unit, namely retail shops product and grainmarketing price. In addition, statistical significant results indicated that the more often abusiness unit is used, the more satisfied customers are (except in the case of retailshops). The average contribution to net profit of each business unit was calculated overa five year period and it was compared to the average performance of each businessunit. The graph indicated that there is a definite correlation between contributiontowards profit and customer satisfaction.Retail shops as a business unit provided interesting results that indicated that retailshops price, retail shops product, retail shops personnel and retail shops service hadthe biggest impact on all the overall drivers of customer satisfaction. This indicates thatretail shops are seen as the 'window to the agricultural business by the customers.The respondents were also asked to indicate what they perceived to be the primaryobjectives of the agricultural business versus what they felt the objectives should be.Very importantly, the results were significant in determining that they perceived theobjectives of the agricultural business to be company/corporate-centred. In contrast,they felt the objectives should be farmer-centred. Specific recommendations weremade with regard to bettering especially retail shops and increasing the availability andquality of retail shops product in an effort to maximise customer satisfaction.

[发布机构] University of the Free State