SOCIAL MEDIA FOR THE ORGANIC FOOD CONSUMER’S BEHAVIOUR AND ITS IMPACT UPON THE DEVELOPMENT OF DIGITAL TOOLS FOR SMALL FARMERS IN ROMANIA

Ioan-Sebastian Brumă

Abstract


The small entrepreneurship on the Romanian food market is facing a series of concerns closely connected to the particular issues of an emerging economic sector. The entrepreneurial reactions are, quite often, intuitive, fall within a relation with the consumer which has been historically shaped in the zone of merchant behaviour, and barely employ digital technologies for business development. Having as a starting point the correlation between the buyer’s role and digital user’s role of the Romanian consumer, as observed in a questionnaire run nationwide, in the present paper, we aim to identify the development opportunities of the small entrepreneurship on the food market of Romania, through integrated social media technologies. By analysing the dynamics of the purchase behaviour and food consumption, digital culture and pragmatism of the consumer, and also the influence exerted by the supply chains upon the purchase decision, we intend to investigate three main clusters of consumers who believe they purchase organic food and, thus, provide helpful suggestions for small entrepreneurs from this niche sector, who wish to further their development strategies.

Keywords


organic food, social media, organic food entrepreneurship, digital marketing, supply chain

References


Adoptă un țăran official website (2019). https://adoptauntaran.ro, accessed August 10, 2019.

Aral, S., Dellarocas, C., & Godes, D. (2013). Social Media and Business Transformation: A Framework for Research. Information Systems Research. Vol. 24, No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.1120.0470

Bojnec, Š., Petrescu, D.C., Petrescu-Mag, R.M., & Rădulescu, C.V. (2019). Locally Produced Organic Food: Consumer Preferences. Amfiteatru Economic. 21(50), doi:10.24818/EA/2019/50/209

Brunori, G., Galli, F., Barjolle, D., Van Broekhuizen, R., Colombo, L., Giampietro, M., Kirwan, J., Lang, T., Mathijs, E., Maye, D., De Roest, K., Rougoor, C., Schwarz, J., Schmitt, E., Smith, J., Stojanovic, Z., Tisenkopfs, T., & Touzard, J.M. (2016). Are Local Food Chains More Sustainable than Global Food Chains? Considerations for Assessment. Sustainability. 8, 449

Butu, A., Vasiliu, C.D., Rodino, S., Brumă, I.S, Tanasă, L., & Butu, M. (2019 a). The Anthropological Analysis of the Key Determinants on the Purchase Decision Taken by the Romanian Consumers Regarding the Ecological Agroalimentary Products. Sustainability. 11(18):4897, https://doi.org/10.3390/su11184897

Butu, A., Vasiliu, C.D., Rodino, S., Brumă, I.S, Tanasă, L., & Butu, M. (2019b). The Process of Ethnocentralizing the Concept of Ecological Agroalimentary Products for the Romanian Urban Consumer. Sustainability. 11(22):6226, https://doi.org/10.3390/su11226226

Digital in 2018 in Eastern Europe Part 2 - East (2018). https://www.slideshare.net/wearesocial/digital-in-2018-in-eastern-europe-part-2-east-86865266, accessed November 11, 2019.

Drupal 8 official website (2016). https://www.drupal.org/, accessed on June 1st, 2016.

Familia Hoșliag Facebook page (2019). www.facebook.com/hosliag, accessed October 05, 2019.

Hassana, S., Nadzimb, S., & Shiratuddinc, N. (2014). Strategic Use of Social Media for Small Business Based on the AIDA Model. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences. Vol. 172, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.01.363

Husson, F., Josse, J., Sebastien, L., & Mazet, J. (2018). Package ‘FactoMineR’: Multivariate Exploratory Data Analysis and Data Mining (Version 1.41), https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/FactoMineR/FactoMine R.pdf, accessed October 10, 2019.

Iașul vrea produse locale Facebook page (2019). https://www.facebook.com/groups/IasulVreaProduseLocale. Accessed 05 October 2019.

Kassambara, A., & Mundt, F. (2017). Package Factoextra: Visualization of a Correlation MatrixExtract and Visualize the Results of Multivariate Data Analyses, https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/factoextra/factoex tra.pdf, accessed October 10, 2019.

Magnusson, M. K., Arvola, A., Hursti, U.-K. K., Åberg, L., & Sjödén, P.-O. (2003). Choice of organic foods is related to perceived consequences for human health and to environmentally friendly behaviour. Appetite. 40(2), 109–117, doi:10.1016/s0195-6663(03)00002-3

Mica Ilinca official website (2019). http://www.micailinca.ro, accessed October 05, 2019.

Nod Verde official website (2019). https://nodverde.ro, accessed October 05, 2019.

Nord Natural Hub official website (2019). www.nordnatural.ro, accessed October 05, 2019.

Paniagua, J., & Sapena, J. (2014). Business performance and social media: Love or hate?. Business Horizons. 57(6):719-728., https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bushor.2014.07.005

Popa, M.E., Mitelut, A.C., Popa, E.E., Stan, A., & Popa, V.I. (2018). Organic foods contribution to

nutritional quality and value. Trends in Food Science and Technology. Vol. 84, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tifs. 2018.01.003

R Project official website (2019). https://www.r-project.org, accessed on June 1st, 2019.

RStudio Team official website (2019). Integrated Development for R. https://rstudio.com, accessed on June 1st, 2019.

Seyfang, G. (2006). Ecological citizenship and sustainable consumption: Examining local organic food networks. Journal of Rural Studies. 22(4), 383–395, doi:10.1016/j.jrurstud.2006.01.003

Stobbelaar, D. J., Casimir, G., Borghuis, J., Marks, I., Meijer, L., & Zebeda, S. (2007). Adolescents? attitudes towards organic food: a survey of 15- to 16-year old school children. International Journal of Consumer Studies. 31(4), 349–356, doi:10.1111/j.1470-6431.2006.00560.x

Stanciu, S., Vîrlănuță, F.O., Vochin, O.A, Ionescu, R.V., & Antohi, V.M. (2019). Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) Market in Romania. Features and Trends. Amfiteatru Economic. 21(Special Issue No. 13), pp. 778-794, doi: 10.24818/EA/2019/S13/ 778

Taina Vie official website (2019) https://www.tainavie.ro/

Verhoef, P. C. (2005). Explaining purchases of organic meat by Dutch consumers. European Review of Agricultural Economics. 32(2), 245–267, doi:10.1093/eurrag/jbi008

Wilke, C., & Woo, K. (2009). Package ‘ggplot2’: Create Elegant Data Visualisations Using the Grammar of Graphics (Version 3.1.1).

Ze List official website (2019) https://www.zelist.ro/, accessed September 20, 2019.


Full Text: PDF

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.