Abstract
The Philippine government encourages consumers to buy locally produced foods to promote growth and sustainable agriculture. This will provide further economic, environmental and social benefits to farmers and local areas, leading to more sustainable patterns of consumption. This qualitative research looks at the views and behaviour of consumers in Tacloban City towards buying foods from public and private supermarkets, focusing on the barriers that prevent greater uptake local produce. Two separate focus groups (N=28) were conducted. Content analysis identified five relevant themes in relation to buying foods from public supermarket and private grocery stores. These were lifestyle, cost, food quality, food choices and environment. Participants reported buying their foods and food products mostly from the local public supermarket with the cost, food quality and food choices as factors influencing them to do so. The main barriers preventing participants from buying from local public supermarkets are the dirty environment and inconvenience. The results of the study are useful in developing future strategies for encouraging people to buy more from the local public supermarkets increasing consumption of local produce.
Highlights
In the past, most of the food that we purchase was sold in the public market where small local retailers or outlets and small farmers from the neighbouring villages are selling their produce
The study seeks to understand the reasons why consumers prefer to buy foods from the local public market while others at the grocery stores of supermalls. Previous studies conducted those by Chamber et al (2007) and Traill (2006) which examined variations in consumer preferences between local, national and imported foods showed that qualitative focus group approach is most appropriate in understanding consumer perceptions and behaviours that is why this study adopted similar approach
It was agreed that foods from the local public supermarkets are those that are produced locally and within the region while foods from the grocery stores in supermalls include national and imported products
Summary
Most of the food that we purchase was sold in the public market where small local retailers or outlets and small farmers from the neighbouring villages are selling their produce. As cities become bigger and highly urbanized, large shopping malls and supermarkets of retail giants start coming in. This phenomenon is observable in many different cities in the Philippines. The trend of rapid popularity of supermarkets has been observed in cities of other developing countries (Traill, 2006). This has happened in response to a number of forces, many of them interconnected: rising incomes, urbanisation, more female participation in the labour force. Supermarkets are selling an increasing amount of local foods, still the majority of their products continue to be nationally produced or imported. In UK, local and regional food products currently accounts for only a fraction of the sale of its food and drink, with only six percent of all food sales produced regionally (Defra, 2003)
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