The Long-Term Orientation of Firm-Suppliers Relationships

Abstract

Within the food products marketing area, traditional researches have centred their attention on market and consumers. But because the final products are defined by their inputs, supply relationships are also important.

The long-term orientation of the commercial relationships established between firms and their suppliers is a subject of great interest at present. Prior researches have shown that lasting relationships with supplier have positive effects on the quality of final products and on the firms satisfaction. But although there are many works that look at this temporal orientation, there has been no previous research analysing the agro-food sector. Therefore, the present paper analyses the moderating effect of belonging to an agro-food protection system on the factors determining the temporal orientation of firm-supplier relationships.

Thus, taking as reference the Spanish agro-food sector, this current work examines this moderating effect. Our findings indicate that this property does indeed have an influence: through the effects of trust and communication on perceived satisfaction, on the one hand, and through the effect of this level of satisfaction on the temporal orientation of the supply relationship, on the other. Firms that belong to an agro-food protection system seem to value trust, communication and satisfaction more than others.

Key Words:

• Relationship
• long-term orientation
• supply
• agro-food products
• agro-food protection system
• moderating effect
• Spain