Do Online Shoppers Attend Farmers’ Markets?

Abstract

Online shopping is changing ways in which offline markets operate. As the online shopping for fresh produce takes off, it is important to investigate its effects on existing physical market outlets. The main objective for this study is to explain how often online shoppers attend farmers’ markets. The study uses data that was collected in 2016 from a sample of 1,205 consumers residing in the south region of the United States who made at least two online purchases within six months prior to participating in this study. This study employed a multinomial Logit model and Stata was used to run the regression. Results show that the majority of these online shoppers never attended a farmers’ market. The relative probabilities for the online shoppers to “never” attend farmers’ markets, attend “occasionally”, and “frequently” are 0.54, 0.28, and 0.18 respectively. We found that the lack of awareness, inconvenient place and/or time, and low interests are major reasons for nonattendance. This study suggests that farmers’ markets could greatly benefit by developing marketing strategies targeting online shoppers.