Family Forest Owners’ Expectations and Perceptions of Service Quality in Timber Transactions in Sweden

Abstract

In Sweden, 59% of the annual gross felling takes place in forests owned by family forest owners (FFOs). Forest companies conduct thousands of timber transactions with FFOs each year, and, most often, harvesting services are provided to them as part of the deal. Delivering services that meet the FFOs’ expectations of quality is important for any organization that wants FFOs to be loyal suppliers. The objectives of this study are to clarify FFOs’ service quality expectations in timber transactions, show how well forest companies meet these expectations, and identify factors that may influence FFOs’ quality assessments. Data were collected through a survey sent out to 973 FFOs, with a response rate of 43% (n = 418). The results show that, on average, FFOs perceived that the quality of the services delivered in relation to their latest timber transaction met their expectations on 2 out of 14 quality features: modern equipment (e.g., forest machines) and staff’s courtesy towards the FFO. The study concludes that skilled and service-minded employees are highly important for maintaining good relationships with FFOs and that forest companies may have a lot to gain by improving communication and taking the interests of the FFOs into greater consideration.

Keywords

SERVQUAL; non-industrial private forest owners; customer relationship management; forestry services; satisfaction

Published in

Forests
2021, volume: 12, number: 11, article number: 1513

SLU Authors

• Kronholm, Thomas

  • Department of Forest Biomaterials and Technology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Staal Wästerlund, Dianne

  • Department of Forest Resource Management, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Business Administration

Publication identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/f12111513

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/114217