Sh Soltani - Ph.D. Assistant professor, Agricultural Planning Economy and Rural DevelopmentResearch Institute, Ministry of Agriculture, Iran
S Rahimi Soureh - Ph.D. Assistant professor, Agricultural Planning Economy and Rural DevelopmentResearch Institute, Ministry of Agriculture, Iran
M. T Shariati - PhD. Retired faculty member of former Rural Research Centre, Iran

One of the essential pre-requisites for the success of small firms in market is the stronglinkage to actors in marketing chain. With the aim of investigating market linkages, thisstudy was carried out in small food industries in the rural areas of Tehran province, Iran.Using a census sampling method, 111 managers of these firms were interviewed. Resultsshow that the studied small food industries have generally weak linkages with thepotential actors in marketing. Among other key actors in market, there is a relativelystronger linkage to customers. Logistic regression shows that the impact of linkage toother firms on profitability is more than that of other marketing linkages. After that, thesecond more important linkage is the linkage to customers. The general conclusion of thisarticle is the need to improving marketing linkage in the studied firms in order to ensureprofitability

Marketing Linkages, Supplier Relationship, Customer Relationship, SmallIndustries, Food Industries