Marketing activities as critical success factors: The case of seed producer cooperatives in Ethiopia

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to identify the specific marketing activities that contribute most to the performance improvement of seed producer cooperatives (SPCs) in Ethiopia. Both quantitative and qualitative procedures were adopted to extract information from knowledgeable and experienced experts using structured questionnaires. Results indicate that clear differences exist between Ethiopian SPCs in their intensity and quality of execution of marketing activities, indicating that these activities are managed and controlled by SPCs themselves. However, the similarity in patterns of intensity and quality of execution of marketing activities shows that these effects cannot be disentangled in the Ethiopian SPCs context. Ethiopian SPCs performed well on marketing activities related to interfunctional coordination, but poorly on activities associated with competitor orientation. SPCs are likely to perform better when they use a variety of marketing activities including quality control of product (seed), product differentiation, managing customer and supplier relationships, responding to customers and competitors, customer and competitor assessment, leadership, integration of activities, and interconnections among committees and members. Hence, to provide value to customers SPCs need to have resources and the capabilities to coordinate these resources in order to execute marketing activities efficiently and effectively.

Factors Affecting Tomato Productivity in Western Oromia, Ethiopia: Evidence from Smallholder Farmers

“…Regarding market information, about 77.80% of households received market information on tomato quality and market demand seeking. This result is in line with [14] that underlined the value of market information for reducing market imperfection by enabling farmers to sell their products and share adequate technology information through prospective marketing linkage to achieve high productivity. Concerning biotic factors, such as insects (whitefly, aphids, etc.)…”

“…According to this author, the trend of tomato production is increasing as an income generation source for smallholder farmers. However, the productivity of tomatoes in the country is constrained by many barriers like poor production management, limitation of availability of inputs (high yielder improved seed, pesticides, and fungicides), limited access to market information, traders' or market fluctuation, and shelf life of fruits (perishability of the crop) [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. To solve these barriers, efforts have been done towards improving tomato productivity by utilizing improved varieties that are highly productive and resistant to pests [19] and dissemination of the varieties by research centers and other sectors for more than two decades.…”

“…There are limited findings on horticultural crops, especially factors affecting their productivity, as majority of studies delve into the production management and marketing systems rather than [14,[19][20][21][22]41]. A missing component of studies on tomato production is understanding factors affecting tomato productivity of smallholder farmers who are widely known to grapple with low productivity of tomato.…”

Harnessing a ‘Currency Matrix’ for Performance Measurement in Cooperatives: A Multi-Phased Study

“…SBA consists of measures relating to the judgmental assessment of internal or external respondents regarding an organization's performance [107,108]. Studies using these measures rely on survey-based direct elicitation means, following in the tradition of management and marketing studies which regularly employ the key informant method, whereby respondents well informed about organizational issues give answers to item statements [25,38].…”

“…SBA measurement is often favored when objective data is difficult to obtain or insufficiently reliable [108]. SBA metrics facilitate the assessment of complex issues (e.g., expert's view on member satisfaction) [110,112] as well as that of non-financial or non-market aspects [60,109].…”