Digitalized business processes – assessment and opportunities of Hungarian agri-food companies

Authors

  • Szilvia Botos
  • Róbert Szilágyi
  • Mihály Tóth
  • Gergely Ráthonyi
  • János Felföldi

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17700/jai.2020.11.1.568

Abstract

Digitalization in agri-food supply chain has become increasingly important since safe and secure food supply is a priority for stakeholders. ICT-based (Information and Communication Technologies) business solutions have an impact on the whole food supply chain and separately the participants (producers, processors, distributors, retailers and consumers). Advanced technologies support many business activities as proving traceability and transparency, improving internal business processes, simplifying cooperation with partners and establishing the capability to develop supplementary value-added services. The main objective of the current paper is to determine the development potentials of digitalized business processes related to the operation of companies related to the production and processing of agricultural products and food. For this aim, we analysed the differences between food producers and food processors regarding their evaluation of ICT solutions in their partnerships and for certain business activities. Institute of Applied Informatics and Logistics at University of Debrecen has prepared a questionnaire for a survey on the assessment of ICT by food producer and food processor enterprises (n=500). We go into a little bit more depth about the role of information share with the final consumers as they are more and more conscious about their food and may have special information requirements for food products. Thus, we supplemented our research with another questionnaire that was aimed at young food consumers (n=376) to survey their attitude to the main food information and the opportunities to support their choice. For the analyses, we used descriptive statistical methods and Mann-Whitney test. Our results show that both enterprise categories assessed the variables tested as being rather medium importance. Statistically, processors evaluated two variables significantly higher compared to producers these were the ‘Fast evaluation of business performance’ (Sig(2-tailed=0,010) and ‘Operating high-quality website’ (Sig(2-tailed)=0.012). For the respondent consumers, food component list is one of the most important product information. The importance of this variable was the third during the purchase (after price and quality) and second in product comparison (after price). The majority (64%) often or always read this information on the package. Most respondents indicated a willingness to use such mobile applications that may support easy information access.

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Published

2020-07-17

How to Cite

Botos, S., Szilágyi, R., Tóth, M., Ráthonyi, G., & Felföldi, J. (2020). Digitalized business processes – assessment and opportunities of Hungarian agri-food companies. Journal of Agricultural Informatics, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.17700/jai.2020.11.1.568

Issue

Section

Journal of Agricultural Informatics

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