ISO 9000 -- A MARKETING TOOL FOR U.S. AGRIBUSINESS

C. Capmany et al. /International Food and Agribusiness Management Review 3 (2000) 41-53     49

Table 4

Comparison of firm’s production process components after ISO 9000 certification

^aUn-paired t-test (2 tailed) of means (heteroscedastic).

^bMann-Whitney-Wilcoxon rank sum test (2 tailed) of medians (adjusted for ties).

*Statistically significant at the 10% level.

Average score: 22 for Large Decrease, 21 for Small Decrease, 0 for No Change, 1 for Small Increase, 2 for
Large Increase.

5.3. Changes in firms’ performance components after becoming ISO 9000 certified

Table 4 summarizes the changes that firms experienced after they obtained ISO 9000
certification (i.e., ex post). Even though these changes could have been influenced by other
factors besides the certification process, they can be indicative of the effect of ISO 9000 on
the firm’s performance. The changes were measured in increases or decreases in the given
categories using a balanced Lickert scale. The top changes for agribusiness and the other
industries were computed as increases in the categories of customer satisfaction, product
traceability, information quality, and sales. These are interesting results due to the fact that
some of these same categories were not perceived as important reasons to seek certification
in the first place. For example, customer requirement, was ranked sixth in the section
addressing reasons to seek certification. Nevertheless, after the certificate was in place, the
respondents ranked customer satisfaction as the category experiencing the biggest increase.
This result is indicative of the fact that certified firms experienced an unexpected benefit from
ISO 9000 in the form of increased customer satisfaction. This last finding contradicts earlier
results found by Terziovski (1995). Regarding the increase in information quality, it can be
said that this is an expected outcome of certification due to the fact that the ISO standard is
so oriented towards documentation. It is therefore logical to assume that the quality of
information available can only increase after implementing the standard. Regarding the
increase in sales, the fact that the marketing aspects of the QMS were viewed as major
reasons to seek certification would seem to indicate that the expectation of an enhanced
market position due to ISO 9000 was well predicted.

The smallest changes in the firms’ performance components experienced ex post were
decreases in the areas of costs, nonconformities, and waste for both groups. This reduction

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