Customer satisfaction received a high importance score (4.97)
and is perceived to be a useful indicator for measuring
performance of the entire supply chain. In this research,
customer satisfaction was defined as the degree to which the
customers are satisfied with the products or services.
However, this indicator is difficult to measure and turned
out to be too broad and ambiguous to meaningfully compare
different chain members. Therefore, it has been replaced with
another indicator. This replacement was carried out based on
the model developed by Kano et al. (1984), which states that
in order to increase customer satisfaction the customer must
be delighted. Given that the product of our study is the
tomato, there is a little variance between competing products,
because it is a natural product (i.e. good, fresh product is
implied by the customer, not expressed). In order to increase
customer satisfaction, the customer needs to be delighted;
therefore there is a need for customer-tailored, attractive
requirements for the product. The major attractive
requirement that came out of the case study is having a
large variety of the product (e.g. cherry tomato, cocktail
tomato), which is captured by the indicator mix flexibility.
Mix flexibility is the ability to change the variety of the
products produced, which enables the firm to enhance
customer satisfaction by providing the kinds of product that
customers request, in a timely manner. This indicator can becomponents that form base for an agri-food supply chain
performance measurement system. All interviewees agreed
about the necessity of these four categories within one
integrated performance measurement framework and
evaluated the framework as complete for measuring
performance of an agri-food supply chain. This provides an
answer to the first research question. Some of the suggested
indicators such as transaction costs, backorders or emissions
are perceived to be unimportant for measuring the
performance of the chain. However, these indicators can be
used in measuring performance at the organizational level, if
chain members perceive them important. The results show
that many performance measurement indicators are measured
in some links of the chain while they are not measured in
others, given the different objectives in the chain. This
provides an answer to the second research question