Measuring Northern Victorian fruit grower expectations of packing services: preliminary results

This paper reports preliminary findings in ongoing research aimed at an understanding of the dynamics of customer satisfaction formation in distribution channels within the economically important Northern Victorian fruit industry. This work aims to correct deficiencies in the current literature concerning distribution channel satisfaction formation, via a longitudinal study involving the experiences and perceptions of the various channel members. Work commenced with a focus on grower satisfaction formation. Qualitative work established that growers nominate a set of eight elements of expectations. These have been operationalised in measures using likert scales and included in the first stage of a survey of Northern Victorian fruit growers. Initial findings appear to support the view that stable and parsimonious measurement of growers’ expectations can be achieved. Significantly, stable and parsimonious measures of global expectations and of ‘outcome’ and ‘process’ dimensions of expectations appear to be achievable. However the small number of returns currently to hand means that such findings should be viewed with caution.