Awareness and Consumption Patterns of Geographical Indication Products

Panyor, Ágota – Vörös, Ágnes

Keywords: geographical indication, special quality, added value, protection system, food consumption habits, Q13, Q19

The focus of our research is on products with geographical indication, including only those products which are classified in the group of agricultural products and foodstuffs. In our research, we would like to find out how well-known are the geographical indications among Hungarian consumers. As well as what factors influence their relation to the labels and how we can increase the consumption of products of distinguished quality. Based on our research results, we can state that the awareness of GI products is rather low and the proportion of regular consumers is also only 7% among the respondents. More than half of the respondents (56%) never look for the GI logo, only 4% are look for it consciously. Of the GI products registered at the time of our survey (15), only 3 products (Szegedi téliszalámi, csabai vastagkolbász and Gyulai pároskolbász) had an outstanding ratio of knowledge and regular consumption. Our results also highlighted that consumers are slightly influenced by the place of origin and the tradition in their food purchases, which is consistent with the results of several previous research studies on this topic. Our proposals are mainly aimed at increasing the consumer awareness of GI products, which requires several marketing communication tools, community marketing programs and expanding sales opportunities.

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