A survey of customer satisfaction in the sales of agricultural machines

Boll, Anikó

Keywords: marketing, satisfaction, agricultural machine manufacturer, service, quality

The production and market distribution of agricultural machines have changed markedly over the past two decades. There has been a slight increase in the sales of machines on a European level. The most powerful change is connected to a current is-sue in Hungary, the changes in traders and distributors in western agriculture. While the manufacturer and importers look out for their own interests. The consumer is the one who makes the decisions.
The aim of the study is to examine customer satisfaction, exploring the infl uencing factors through an example of an agricultural machinery manufacturer as a special market, which has been present in Hungary for several decades. The first part of the research is based on a questionnaire, which includes closed questions. Answers given by nearly 500 customers have been processed. The customers were selected from among those, who bought five types from agricultural machinery in 2006. I inter-viewed a further 60 farmers in person and over the phone in 2012 and 2013, based on the same questionnaire. My research results have shown that the farmers who pur-chased machines from the database IU examines were more interested in the services linked to the machines than issues connected to the manufacturing process.. The data in the study also implied that while customer loyalty is of great importance, it is not linked as strongly to satisfaction with the distributor as another study in the automo-tive industry found.

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