Bringing the Consumer Back in—The Motives, Perceptions, and Values behind Consumers and Rural Tourists’ Decision to Buy Local and Localized Artisan Food—A Swedish Example

Paulina Rytkönen,Madeleine Bonow,Håkan Tunón,Chloe Girard

doi:10.3390/agriculture8040058

Paulina Rytkönen, Madeleine Bonow + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture8040058

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Abstract

This article highlights the motivational factors behind consumers’ and tourists’ decisions to buy local artisan cheese in Jämtland (Sweden). Empirically, the case itself diverts from the typical Franco-Mediterranean case in which both the actions of producers and consumers are embedded in historical, long-term culinary traditions and territorial features, nor is it the typical farmers’ market or another market-driven direct produce system. The main purpose is to shed light on the motivational factors behind the purchasing decision of consumers and tourists by studying the attributes that consumers embody in the products. The article is based on two consumer surveys/short interviews, the first conducted in June 2012 and the second in February 2017. The results were tested against/related to the wider local food discussion conceptualized through four types of attributes. Namely, intrinsic and extrinsic attributes; post-modernity and environmental attributes; geographical and territorial attributes; and local and rural development attributes. The results in this article clearly show that consumers value a combination of different attributes from both market-driven direct produce systems and close typicity systems. Therefore, the construction of proximity from the point of view of the consumer can be derived from a complex set of attributes and motivational factors not normally highlighted in the localized food discussion.

Highlights

The academic discussion concerning local food emerged almost twenty years ago when local markets and farm stores started to attract more attention from policymakers and scholars
100 years of intensive and far-reaching self-sustained industrialization of the agro-food system created an agro-food economy that, for a long time, has been export-oriented and inserted in global trade, and in which food production became disconnected from consumption and food distribution became based on large retailers who completely outcompeted the local market for food [2]
The results in this article clearly show that consumers value a combination of different attributes from both MDDPS and CTS

Summary

Introduction

The academic discussion concerning local food emerged almost twenty years ago when local markets and farm stores started to attract more attention from policymakers and scholars. Agriculture 2018, 8, 58 complex global food chains In this discussion cases and examples often depart from the UK and US, where the structure of the agro-food sector has been more diversified than in Sweden, in spite of the far-gone agro-food industrialization. 100 years of intensive and far-reaching self-sustained industrialization of the agro-food system created an agro-food economy that, for a long time, has been export-oriented and inserted in global trade, and in which food production became disconnected from consumption and food distribution became based on large retailers who completely outcompeted the local market for food [2]. Consumers have been used to buying all of their food in large supermarkets, where cheeses and other foodstuffs are nothing like artisan food

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