Investigating the effect of customers' knowledge and awareness on improving the sustainability of the pistachio supply chain in Iran from the experts' point of view

Sustainable management of thesupply chain has a special place in thesupply of products to thefinal consumer.Iran's pistachio industry is also very important in providing foreign exchange and improving thecountry's trade balance.Therefore, reforming thesupply chain through theexpansion of knowledge and awareness will greatly contribute to thegreater competitiveness of this industry in theglobal market and thestability of thesupply chain.Therefore, thepresent study seeks to investigate theeffect of thelevel of knowledge and awareness of customers on improving thesustainability of thepistachio product supply chain in Iran from the experts' point of view.This research was applied interms of purpose, which was done with a mixed approach.In thequalitative stage, thestudied population included20experts of Iran's pistachio industry, who were selected through thewebsite of theIranian Pistachio Association, using thepurposeful snowball sampling method.In thequantitative stage, thestatistical population included156people from thefield of pistachio industry,130 people were determined according to Cochran'sformula and simple random sampling was used.In thequalitative part, thematic analysis method was used to identify the categories and concepts, and in thequantitative part, thestructural equation modeling method was used with SmartPLS3 software to analyze therelationships between thevariables.Based on theobtained results, in thequalitative section,55concepts were identified in theform of 6main categories. Also, theresults of thequantitative section showed that the categories of agricultural knowledge have a direct effect on processing knowledge, processing knowledge on warehousing and transportation knowledge,warehousing and transportation knowledge on marketing and distribution knowledge,marketing and distribution knowledge on support and service knowledge.Also, allthe categories, except the marketing and distribution category, which wasnot approved, have a direct impact on sustainable supplychain management.