Die Bodenkultur - Journal for Land Management, Food and Environment

D. Kovačić, M. Radman and R. Haas:

Segmentation of city market customers in Croatia –Towards a marketing strategy for fruit and vegetable markets

Summary

Better knowledge of the consumer is the presumption for preparing the efficacious marketing concept. This article focuses on the preferences, requests, habits and attitudes of the consumers, which are buying fruit and vegetable on city markets in Croatia. The main goal of this study is identification and description of the different market segments based on the relevant buying characteristics of the consumers, their psychological, geographic and socio-demographic characteristics. The results are based on a survey that was made in June 2000 on city markets in Zagreb, Rijeka, Split and Osijek. 93 % of the consumers buy fruit and vegetable on the city markets. The consumers are mostly satisfied with the fruit and vegetable choice, and unsatisfied with the price/quality ratio on the city markets. Four consumer segments were identified, based on their psychological characteristics. In order to describe these segments we detected differences between these segments according to the geographic, socio-demographic and buying characteristics of the consumers. The results of this research could be a starting point for the domestic producers to define a marketing strategy for fruit and vegetables on city markets or in any other distribution channel. Key words: Croatia, city markets, fruit and vegetable, consumer segmentation, target marketing.