The present role and future prospects for markets in the Hungarian food supply chain

Szabó, Dorottya – Juhász, Anikó

Keywords: farmers’ direct sales, farmers’ market, consumer and producer survey

Markets are a special kind of short supply chain and it is an unfairly ‘neglected’ aspect of Hungarian retail trade research. In the past two decades the presence and role of markets in the retail sector has decreased as the hyper/supermarket and discounter retail chains have expanded. This decline was not infl uenced by the fact that markets may provide economic, social and environmental benefits at the same time. Because of the drastically changed retail environment the previous operational strategies do not guarantee the survival of the existing markets, thus innovative management methods must be implemented for the existing and newly founded markets to succeed. Our research has shown that overall farmers and buyers evaluated markets quite similarly but in every question vendors had a more favourable opinion about markets than consumers did. This suggests that, despite their direct relationship with consumers, market vendors overestimate customer satisfaction, which in the long run may negatively infl uence the position of the markets. In addition – according to the consumers and producers – the markets rarely provide effective information and marketing strategies about the producers, the products or the market itself, which would be essential for increasing both consumer trust and footfalls in markets.

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