Relationship marketing in agribusiness: a case study

The primary objective of this thesis research is to address the lack of primacy for relationship marketing in agriculture by providing an example, using the case study method, of exploratory research in relationship marketing within the agriculture industry. An embedded case study was conducted to take a preliminary, exploratory, and conservative first step among identifying relationship marketing in the agribusiness industry. The host organization, its employees, and their relationships were used to conduct the case study The relationship marketing literature is more or less structured around key themes: its definitions, constructs, relationship types, strategies, theory or economic contributions, and empirics. This case study is built around the acceptance and acknowledgement of these theoretical themes and propositions – utilizing key relationship marketing constructs as the foundation to develop an interview dialogue between myself and employees of the focal firm. The neutrality of questions asked within the interviews were developed to produce results that would explicitly describe the relationship marketing environment, via these employees’ relationships and responses, within this organization. After complete understanding and inductive coding of each interview transcript in its entirety, results from this case study were generated alongside the theoretical propositions suggested within the relationship marketing literature.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Agricultural & Applied Economics

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Sirles, Hilary Joan

• relationship marketing
• agribusiness
• services industry
• industrial marketing
• trust
• commitment
• cooperation
• service
• concern
• interaction
• communication
• value

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2015 Hilary Sirles

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/78777

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/78777