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.
Highlights
In Sweden, the forest industry is of significant importance to the country’s economy.In 2019, it employed 70,000 workers and exported products to a value of nearly 15 billion euros [1]
The respondents’ average age was 60.7 years, and 83% of them were males. This implies that male family forest owners (FFOs) were slightly more inclined to complete the questionnaire as their share of the sample was 79%
A conclusion of this study is that skilled and service-minded employees are highly important for forest companies that want to live up to FFOs’ service quality expectations
Summary
In Sweden, the forest industry is of significant importance to the country’s economy.In 2019, it employed 70,000 workers and exported products to a value of nearly 15 billion euros [1]. In Sweden, the forest industry is of significant importance to the country’s economy. To supply the forest industry with raw materials, about 90 million cubic meters of wood is harvested domestically each year from the country’s 23.6 million hectares (ha) of productive forestlands [2,3]. A significant share of the timber supply comes from family forest owners (FFOs), who, in recent years, have been responsible for 59% of the annual harvesting volume [2]. This group consists of approximately 320,000 individuals, who, in total, own 48% of Sweden’s woodlands [4]
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