Revealing the opinion climates of fruit producers and their sales connection

Abstract

Although researches on the subject of business relationships indicate that the quality of the relationship between the partners is a central element of effective cooperation, it can still be considered an unexplored territory. This paper aims to reveal the relationship of fruit producers and customers, based on relationship quality, as well as determining what customer cooperation is regarded by fruit producers as the most favourable . The survey was conducted between 2013 and 2014, involving 223 producers from Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg County, to evaluate their customer cooperation. The results of the evaluation concluded that producers value factors of relationship quality in their cooperation with sales channels differently. Their opinions reflect that overall the most favourable relationship exists between producers and agricultural cooperatives. The main reason is that this cooperation is primarily based on trust, commitment and friendship, where there is typically no conflict among parties and they mutually accept dependence. Since the results of the evaluation clearly reflected that producers value cooperation differently regarding the factors of relationship quality with respect to the various sales channels, further research is justified to reveal correlations between various relationship evaluations (opinion climates) and performance as well as devoting more attention to relationships among the various factors.