Alternative Foods — Marketing Perspectives on the Production and Distribution Systems

Most societal and environmental challenges that humanity is currently facing relate to unsustainable consumption patterns and lifestyles. This unsustainability is sup‐ ported by consumerism and producerism that have high interests for fierce produc‐ tivity. This study presents a supply-demand marketing perspective based on the current literature and current market realities. Local food production and consump‐ tion are topics gaining much attention in academic marketing research and market‐ ing practice. Local food systems regenerate the relationships between producers and consumers. A mixed design is used to assess the added values of the produc‐ tion and distribution systems in Canada. On one hand the supply side situation was assessed by conducting personal in-depth interviews with alternative food produc‐ ers and market intermediaries. On the other hand, a survey was administered to lo‐ cal food consumers to assess their consumption patterns. Findings show that producers/farmers have a number of positive outcomes. Intrinsic values such as taste, quality and freshness, nutrition and health, are very important to the consum‐ er both for local food products in general and local organic foods products in partic‐ ular. Further, it is determined that price is important but not determinant of local foods purchase. Further, consumers’ issues and concerns over conventional food products are determinant factors when purchasing local food products. It is also im‐ portant to realize that consumers may not fully understand the meaning of locally produced food. © 2015 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.