The Evaluation of Effective Factors on Buyer's Satisfaction in Supply chain - A Case Study of Food Factories in Esfahan

In this research, the effective factors that determine the relationship between industrial buyers and suppliers are identified, and the concept of satisfaction, as an important factor, is able to minimize the supply process of primary materials and of the product from the order time until delivery time through elements such as commitment, cooperation, communication, trust, adaptation of expectation, and long-term orientation. This concept also is able to provide synergy, which consequently leads to buyers’ satisfaction. The main purpose of this research is to analyze the concept of satisfaction in firm-supplier relationships (in the viewpoint of industrial buyers). Applicable purposes of this research are to examine the relationship between satisfaction and trust, trust with commitment in the supply chain, and the relationship of commitment with buyers’ satisfaction and long-term orientation in the supply chain from an industrial buyer’s perspective. The statistical database in this research is all of food factory managers in Esfahan, and the required data is collected by questionnaires. The research method is a descriptive one; for description of findings, frequency distribution tables are used, along with correlation test and path analysis with SPSS software. Eight hypotheses are used and six hypotheses are accepted. The results of this research indicate that trust, adaptation to expectations, communication, and cooperation have an effective and meaningful relationship with satisfaction. In addition, trust and satisfaction have positive relationships with commitment. The implications and results of this study can be applied by industrial marketers, organizational buyers, management consultants, and business educators who may use the empirically tested model as a diagnostic and monitoring tool in guiding business relationships in the proper direction.