The effects of agro-food supply chain integration on product quality and financial performance: Evidence from Chinese agro-food processing business

Aiming at the unique characteristics of agro-food supply chain, this study builds a comprehensive model to investigate the impact of agro-food supply chain integration, composed of internal, supplier and customer integration, on agro-food product quality and financial performance. It explores the relationships among these factors using the data from 162 Chinese agro-food processing businesses. The findings reveal that internal integration and supplier integration are the critical factors to improve product quality within the context of agrofood supply chain. Moreover, the product quality fully mediates the relationship between internal integration and financial performance, and the relationship between supplier integration and financial performance. This study indicates that securing product quality and food safety is an effective way to achieve better financial performance for agro-food processing businesses. This study could help agro-food processing businesses understand the value creation roles of agro-food supply chain integration and provide valuable guidance for them to decide how to respond to various challenges and manage agro-food supply chain integration in order to improve product quality and achieve higher financial performance. A unique contribution of this study is to provide a theoretical framework for advancing the agro-food supply chain integration literature, which thereby could be expected to open a starting point for more agro-food supply chain integration research in the future.