Purchase Decision, Product Performance, and Supplier Performance

Livestock and pasture owners normally base their purchase decisions on a range of benefits, which can be divided in two categories, product performance and supplier performance.

Product performance relates to genetic or cultivar characteristics, such as plant type, persistence, resistance to pests and diseases, seasonal forage yield, forage quality, response to inputs, and performance of grazing livestock. Product performance also includes seed quality characteristics, such as purity, germination, seed treatments, and presence of endophyte.

Supplier performance deals with packaging, package size, appearance, ability to maintain seed quality, and useful information conveyed to the livestock owner or purchaser. Supplier performance also involves the reputation of the supplier, continuity of seed supply, credit arrangements, warehousing and transport, competitive pricing, and the range of products. Other aspects of supplier performance are after sales service, including on-farm technical advice and solving problems related to poor product performance, and branding that identifies products supplied by companies recognized as suppliers of good products and services, or vice versa.