Kronholm, Thomas and Staal Wästerlund, Dianne
(2021).
Family Forest Owners’ Expectations and Perceptions of Service Quality in Timber Transactions in Sweden.
Forests. 12
, 1513
[Research article]
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Abstract
In Sweden, 59% of the annual gross felling takes place in forests owned by family forest owners (FFOs). Forest companies conduct thousands of timber transactions with FFOs each year, and, most often, harvesting services are provided to them as part of the deal. Delivering services that meet the FFOs’ expectations of quality is important for any organization that wants FFOs to be loyal suppliers. The objectives of this study are to clarify FFOs’ service quality expectations in timber transactions, show how well forest companies meet these expectations, and identify factors that may influence FFOs’ quality assessments. Data were collected through a survey sent out to 973 FFOs, with a response rate of 43% (n = 418). The results show that, on average, FFOs perceived that the quality of the services delivered in relation to their latest timber transaction met their expectations on 2 out of 14 quality features: modern equipment (e.g., forest machines) and staff’s courtesy towards the FFO. The study concludes that skilled and service-minded employees are highly important for maintaining good relationships with FFOs and that forest companies may have a lot to gain by improving communication and taking the interests of the FFOs into greater consideration.
Authors/Creators: | Kronholm, Thomas and Staal Wästerlund, Dianne | ||||||
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Title: | Family Forest Owners’ Expectations and Perceptions of Service Quality in Timber Transactions in Sweden | ||||||
Series Name/Journal: | Forests | ||||||
Year of publishing : | 2021 | ||||||
Volume: | 12 | ||||||
Article number: | 1513 | ||||||
Number of Pages: | 14 | ||||||
ISSN: | 1999-4907 | ||||||
Language: | English | ||||||
Publication Type: | Research article | ||||||
Article category: | Scientific peer reviewed | ||||||
Version: | Published version | ||||||
Copyright: | Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0 | ||||||
Full Text Status: | Public | ||||||
Subjects: | (A) Swedish standard research categories 2011 > 5 Social Sciences > 502 Economics and Business > Business Administration | ||||||
Keywords: | SERVQUAL, non-industrial private forest owners, customer relationship management, forestry services, satisfaction | ||||||
URN:NBN: | urn:nbn:se:slu:epsilon-p-114217 | ||||||
Permanent URL: | http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:slu:epsilon-p-114217 | ||||||
Additional ID: |
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Alternative URL: | https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4907/12/11/1513 | ||||||
ID Code: | 26015 | ||||||
Faculty: | S - Faculty of Forest Sciences | ||||||
Department: | (S) > Department of Forest Biomaterials and Technology (S) > Dept. of Forest Resource Management (NL, NJ) > Dept. of Forest Resource Management | ||||||
Deposited By: | SLUpub Connector | ||||||
Deposited On: | 03 Nov 2021 14:25 | ||||||
Metadata Last Modified: | 23 Feb 2022 20:31 |
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