engleski

Direct selling applied to strawberry

Terms of trade on Croatian agricultural and food market will be changed with the entry of Croatia into the WTO. The product supply, quantitatively and qualitatively will increase and the selling prices will decline. Those new market conditions will demand domestic producers to increase the competitiveness of their products. Therefore we aimed our research towards farmers’ markets as one possible way of new marketing strategy. During the period of 15 days we organised a strawberry farmers’ market on one of the most frequent places in the city of Zagreb. On five stalls, all producers were selling their strawberries with equal price, to avoid price competitiveness. The market opening time, from 6 a.m. till 8 p.m., was an additional competitive advantage in reference to the main competitive selling channel, the opendoor market. The results of our research have shown that the sales volume on the farmers’ market is manifold larger compared to opendoor markets. Furthermore, the farmers achieve relatively high prices and almost the twice much revenue when selling on farmers’ markets than when selling to a middleman. According to a survey carried out with the end-customers, the farmers’ market was judged as very good. The survey results indicated that the Croatian consumers prefer domestic over imported products. The products’ quality and the favourable selling place additionally increase consumers’ preferences for the farmers’ markets.

Zagreb; farmer's market; marketing program; consumer's preferences; domestic product

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