TY - JOUR
T1 - Marketing Channels for Local Food
AU - Printezis, Iryna
AU - Grebitus, Carola
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank Dr. Riccardo Scarpa for his helpful comments and suggestions to improve the experimental design of this article. Furthermore, the authors would like to thank Dr. Timothy Richards for comments and suggestions regarding the manuscript. This work was supported by EASM-3: Collaborative Research: Physics-Based Predictive Modeling for Integrated Agricultural and Urban Applications, USDA-NIFA , Grant No. 2015-67003-23508 and NSF-MPS-DMS , Award Number: 1419593 .
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2018/10
Y1 - 2018/10
N2 - Local food can be purchased through intermediated marketing channels, such as grocery stores, or through direct-to-consumer marketing channels, for instance, farmers markets. While the number of farms that utilize direct-to-consumer outlets keeps growing, the value of direct-to-consumer sales has reached a plateau. At the same time, intermediated sales continue to rise. If consumers prefer to purchase local food through intermediated channels, then policies designed to support direct channels may be misguided. Using an online choice experiment, this paper investigates consumers’ willingness to pay for local food differentiated by marketing channel. We find that, on average, consumers are willing to pay a premium for local food. However, they are not willing to pay premiums for local food that is sold at farmers markets, and discount it when it is purchased directly from an urban farm. Our findings can be used by farmers, marketers and policy makers to develop a better understanding of consumers’ motivation for buying local through various channels.
AB - Local food can be purchased through intermediated marketing channels, such as grocery stores, or through direct-to-consumer marketing channels, for instance, farmers markets. While the number of farms that utilize direct-to-consumer outlets keeps growing, the value of direct-to-consumer sales has reached a plateau. At the same time, intermediated sales continue to rise. If consumers prefer to purchase local food through intermediated channels, then policies designed to support direct channels may be misguided. Using an online choice experiment, this paper investigates consumers’ willingness to pay for local food differentiated by marketing channel. We find that, on average, consumers are willing to pay a premium for local food. However, they are not willing to pay premiums for local food that is sold at farmers markets, and discount it when it is purchased directly from an urban farm. Our findings can be used by farmers, marketers and policy makers to develop a better understanding of consumers’ motivation for buying local through various channels.
KW - Convenience
KW - Farmers market
KW - Organic
KW - Produce
KW - Tomatoes
KW - Travel time
KW - Urban farm
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U2 - 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2018.05.021
DO - 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2018.05.021
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85048624826
SN - 0921-8009
VL - 152
SP - 161
EP - 171
JO - Ecological Economics
JF - Ecological Economics
ER -