Abstract

This article focuses on the relationship marketing approach to marketing of agricultural products. The article provides specific insights into, and comparisons between, suppliers of two particular agricultural products sectors: in Britain, the fresh produce (fruits and vegetables) sector and, in New Zealand, the wine sector. The article examines the nature of marketing relationships from the perspective of the suppliers in these sectors and their relationships, networks, and interactions with importers and retail buyers in the food and beverage industry. The research methodology is qualitative and inductive in nature and utilises multiple cases. Interpretation is first through content analysis of each individual case in order to identify important themes, clusters, and patterns in the research data and secondly through across-case analysis. Investigated marketing issues include the following: nature of relationship marketing, implementation of relationship marketing, and monitoring and measurement of relationship marketing.