Effective Food Network Management through Dynamic E-Commerce Partnering: Trust and Cultural Influences

Vertical coordination in food networks is characterized by dynamically changing supply and marketing relationships. E-business provides support and improvement options for vertical coordination processes in food networks. However, adoption of ebusiness in food networks is low as available e-business offers as the communication of safeguards for trust and control as basis for the transaction decision is not realized appropriately. In addition, trust generation is highly subjective and influenced by the cultural background of a person. This paper analyzes decision preferences for trust generation as basis for the design of e-business environments for food networks. The analytic hierarchy process is applied to prioritize preferences for different transaction scenarios in food networks.