Exploring the Influence of Digital Communication Tools on Reputation and Loyalty: A Study of Agri-food Firms

Since the issue of food safety is increasingly critical for the population’s purchasing and consumption decisions, communicating these aspects to the market is becoming a critical success factor for competing in global agri-food markets. This is particularly true for digital marketing communication. However, there is little attention in the marketing and management literature on the role played by digital communication of health and food safety in agri-food SMEs. In this respect, the purpose of this research is to investigate how digital communication impacts business reputation and customer loyalty, from the entrepreneurial perspective. Data were collected from 270 Italian firms operating in the agri-food industry from March to May 2022 through an online questionnaire. Descriptive statistics and regression analysis were performed. Results highlight that some digital communication tools positively influence reputation and loyalty from the entrepreneur’s perspective. In particular, websites positively influence reputation while websites and email positively influence loyalty. As all research, also our study has limitations: the main one is that we collected data from a single European country and the results cannot be generalized. At the authors’ knowledge, no previous studies have investigated the level of adoption of digital communication tools by Agri-food SMEs and tested the influence of these tools on business reputation and customer loyalty.