Branding Traditional and Natural Products by Providing Tourist Experience: What Are the Effects

Abstract

The mission of this research is to analyze how small producers of natural and traditional products can strengthen their position in the market and bring positive change to themselves and their stakeholders by establishing a brand and making it stronger through storytelling, organic certification and providing tourist experience. The study was approached inductively, by applying in-depth multiple source analysis on an identified exemplar case. The results show that creating a brand story and getting and presenting organic label are important factors for the market success, but yield limited results without consumers having the opportunity to experience the brand and its story. Producers of natural and traditional products are adviced to think of ways of how to provide consumer experience and how to get consumers in touch with their products, i.e. how to turn a non touristic business into a touristic one. This will have the strongest effect on their own sales, but will also benefit the other stakeholders the most.

Research on Consumer Perception Regarding Traditional Food Products of Romania

“…For example, a study on consumer behavior in Poland highlights statistically significant values for the "curiosity" criterion in food consumption as being very closely related to the tendency to consume these products, and the "recommend to a friend" criterion [55,[65][66][67][68]. In another study on the attitudes of young adult consumers (18-30 years) from seven European countries (Greece, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia, Croatia, Denmark the marquis of France) [69][70][71][72][73][74], it is reported that young people and adults from eastern European countries are more easily influenced by their friends and close relatives compared to those from western countries [31,56,[75][76][77][78][79][80]. The criteria "curiosity" (ST4) and "recommendation to a friend" (ST3) are statistically significant in the "residence" group (p < 0.05), with those who live in the urban environment being more open in all four selection criteria for traditional food products Additionally, the criterion "label" (ST7) (p = 0.010 < 0.05) is statistically significant for the socio-demographic characteristic "place of birth", where high values are attributed to respondents born in rural areas with rural origins.…”