**5. Conclusions**

This study relies on the expectancy–disconfirmation paradigm in service management research and the related service quality (SERVQUAL) approach. According to this approach, LSQ can be described by comparing customers' expectations with customers' perceptions of the service received. The pre-defined conceptual model of the attributes of LSQ which are associated with superior LSQ in rural Ukraine was explored with EFA as a construct comprising five dimensions and 22 attributes. Last but not least, this paper investigates LSQ from the perspective of agri-businesses using scales that address sustainability. Customers' expectations in terms of social sustainability-related attributes of LSQ are substantially higher than customers' perceptions. Customers' perceptions of environmentally-related attributes of LSQ are comparable with their expectations.

This study fills the following research gaps: it explores the metrics of factors related to logistics in the agri-food supply chain and collects evidence about expectations and perceived levels of sustainability-related LSQ attributes in emerging and developing European economies, which have previously been underrepresented in the literature. It delivers evidence about LSQ previously not given in the literature.

The findings support those of other studies that consider the factor of reliability as one of most important dimensions of LSQ [11], either in a developing country [18,20] or in Europe [22], as well as the quality of customer focus in an emerging logistics industry as a further important dimension of LSQ [13,16,21]. Moreover, this study delivers evidence that the emphasis on environmental and social sustainability in logistics operations is becoming more significant than found in previous research by Thai [33].

Logistics operations managers can use the explored attributes for evaluating their service quality and also for benchmarking or a gap analysis regarding their most important competitors in Ukraine. Furthermore, logistics operations managers should focus on the reliability and quality of their customer focus since these dimensions are considered to be most critical to increasing perceived LSQ. The expectations for corporate social responsibility are substantially higher than the perceived levels and that is why it is expandable. Factors such as social responsibility and human safety (SUS20), performance statement and a vision for community responsibility (SUS19), and ethical image (SUS17) offer the greatest potential among all 22 attributes to increase satisfaction among agricultural enterprises in Ukraine.

The validity and reliability of the proposed attributes can be further tested in the context of other emerging European economies. The role of LSQ can be tested at a different stage of an agri-food supply chain, e.g., the stage of the end consumer, investigating its effect on the perceived quality of the product and ultimate consumer satisfaction.

Finally, this study has the following limitations. Data collection was interrupted by the Russian–Ukraine war and data were only collected in selected UTCs in Ukraine so that the study's results cannot be generalized without additional testing in other territorial units of Ukraine. Moreover, this exploratory study analyzed expected and perceived logistics quality, which will very probably have changed after the Russian–Ukraine war, but can be used for future comparisons.

**Funding:** The data collection for this research was funded by the Ukraine Office, Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung grant number IB21-014. Open access publication enabled by IU International University of Applied Sciences.

**Data Availability Statement:** The data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to third-party funding.

**Acknowledgments:** I would like to thank colleagues from the Uman National University of Horticulture and the Uman District Military Administration for their help with data collection for this research.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
