Print

Archer, Mike

Community Development and Applied Economics

2013

M.S.

This thesis takes a qualitative look at how customer feedback and networking play into the success of agricultural entrepreneurs. We use in-depth interviews of 20 agricultural entrepreneurs from around the state of Vermont and find that while customer feedback and networkings play key roles in business development offering benefits in terms of higher customer satisfaction, knowledge sharing, competitive advantages and marketing, scale, business age and opportunity costs can make these systems and benefits look very different from one firm to another.