Consistent with the trend witnessed in other European countries, in recent years there has been an increasing demand among Hungarian consumers for products purchased directly from farmers. However, no research has been published on the determination of clusters of consumers of short food supply chain (SFSC) products in Hungary. This study describes which groups of consumers are more likely to purchase such products, and their reasons for doing so. In the summer of 2013, 1,015 randomly-sampled adults were asked to complete questionnaires during face-to-face, on-street meetings with trained staff. The survey explored their willingness to support direct sales and production of local foods, their perceptions of product reliability, and their attitudes toward global supply-driven systems. As it was not possible to identify a clear structure of factors determining opinions, perceptions and attitudes directly from the results of the questionnaires, principal component analysis was performed, and K-mean cluster analysis was used to partition the respondents into five clusters. These were labelled 'Favouring imports and large farms, 'Favouring small farms', 'Informed and empowered consumers group in favour of local farms', 'Universally positive' and 'Unconcerneď. This method was effective in identifying groups of potential target consumers. The level of support for local foods...

In recent years, there has been a rapid growth in new type, direct and short supply chains (SSC) Hungary, and the markets have proved to be globalisation-resilient, keeping their market share from sales of fast-moving consumer goods. We conducted a consumer and producer survey to identify the most important expectations and experiences about markets in Hungary. We applied a service quality model (SERVQUAL) to measure the consumers’ and producers’ opinions and satisfaction of Hungarian markets. A warning result of our study is that vendors estimate their level of service above that of the consumers’ experiences which means that, in spite of the direct communication, they do not have an accurate understanding of their customers’ requirements. Our surveys also showed that there is a substantial deficiency between the services expected and experienced at markets in all dimensions (environment, service, convenience and produce) that influence the choice of retail channel. The most important dimension proved to be produce quality which should thus remain in the focus of market developments. In recent years, new trends in urban local food movements have started to emerge in Hungary which could not be detected at the time of our survey (2012). Thus we intend to extend...