An assessment of the role of trust and satisfaction in global business partnerships

The phasing out of the Multi-fibre Arrangement by 2005 is perhaps the biggest threat to the Mauritian textile and clothing (T and C) industry. Moreover, increasing competition from countries such as China and Eastern Europe and increasing consumerism globally will inevitably shake our local textile industry. Rexha (1998) proposed a model whereby two conditions, satisfaction and trust, were propounded as being essential to reap the benefits of close buyer-supplier relationships. In this way, Mauritian suppliers could continue to retain their existing customers and attract new ones through word-of-mouth. The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which Mauritian T and C firms believe in satisfying their customers and building trust in their customer relationships. 100 firms were surveyed and a response rate of 41 per cent was obtained. The findings suggested that the emphasis of firms was rather on customer satisfaction with little effort being made to move the relationship to a trustful one.