Customer satisfaction of agricultural business units: The case of a major South African agricultural business

Very little research has been done on business units within an agricultural business, especially with regard to customer satisfaction. It could be beneficial for managers of agricultural businesses to determine which business units perform the best and the worst in terms of customer satisfaction and which units most influence customer satisfaction. A major agricultural business in central South Africa took part in this quantitative research study of which the target population was all active customers providing income above R100 000 to the agricultural business. The response rate was 35.8 per cent. The results indicated that customer satisfaction towards retail shops has the biggest impact on overall satisfaction of all the business units. Almost 99 per cent of the respondents make use of this business unit and retail shops are generally considered to be the “window” through which customers view the agricultural business. The best performing business unit was grain storage, while mechanisation (workshops) was considered to be the worst performing business unit for the participating business. When these two business units were tested separately from the other business units, it was found that mechanisation (workshops) had the biggest impact on customer satisfaction, indicating that if the participating business were to consider improving customer satisfaction of the agricultural business as a whole, it should rather focus on the worst performing business unit, because a small improvement in the customer satisfaction of this business unit could increase customer satisfaction substantially for the business as a whole.