Customer Trustworthiness and Procedural Fairness on Relationship Marketing Performance of Food Suppliers in Multi-Customer Relationships

This study examines how a food supplier’s perceptions of customer trustworthiness relate to its customer concentration, the extent to which a supplier’s sales are unevenly distributed across its major customers, and how customer concentration is associated with procedural fairness perceptions and relationship marketing performance amid market uncertainty in the food supply industry. The multilevel model results show that trustworthy relationships are more strongly associated with perceptions of procedural fairness in stable food supply markets, where product demand, price forecasts, retail sales, and input costs are more predictable. While high customer concentration promotes perceptions of procedural fairness, customer trustworthiness is more strongly related to those perceptions when the food supplier has a more diverse customer base. More importantly, customer trustworthiness is not directly related to food suppliers’ relationship marketing performance. Rather, customer trustworthiness shapes a food supplier’s perceptions of procedural fairness, which, in turn, provides an active pathway to improved relationship marketing performance. The study contributes to a better understanding of customer trustworthiness and procedural fairness in the development of sustainable food supply networks amid market uncertainty.