Nowadays, an increasing number of consumers are demanding more information and more direct contact with food producers in order to avoid the various intermediaries in the supply chain, thus improving food traceability and price transfer. This has led to the development of more direct (short) food supply chains (SFSCs). Although consumer preferences to use SFSCs rather than traditional (long) supply chains have been widely researched in the literature, this study brings a new approach with the use of social media sites to build online SFSCs. A focus group approach with a total of 32 participants was used in this study with the main objective to understand consumers’ awareness and acceptance of SFSCs. Special attention was given to the use of social media and electronic word of mouth (eWOM) as new approaches to support the creation of such alternative channels.

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to get a consumer’s cross-cultural insight on the potential of using social networking sites as short food supply chains. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative approach, using free listing tasks and sentence completion techniques, was adopted in this research. The research group decided to apply the study in three countries with different cultural backgrounds, namely, Mexico, Spain and Egypt. The final sample consisted of 424 respondents in total, including 209 Spanish, 111 Mexicans and 104 Egyptians, all of them actual users of social networks. Findings The most significant result that emerges from this study is that a high percentage of consumers within the three countries might be interested in these new short food chains. Also, the study offers food companies the most relevant motivations and barriers of consumers for their engagement to this initiative. Also, the study provides categories of foods that consumers would purchase via these chains in each country. Originality/value The multicultural perspective of this study might open new opportunities for food businesses around the world, especially for SMEs, to develop new short food supply chains enabling them to increase sale levels and, therefore, increase profitability and reduce costs.

Ecolabeling is a tool used to promote and support more sustainable products by providing information that enables consumers to select products with better environmental performance. Ecolabels, therefore, can help create social awareness around sustainable consumption and promote respectful attitudes toward the environment, thus generating responsible consumption habits among the consumers. This study aims to analyze the heterogeneity of consumers' motivations in the process of purchasing food products with ecolabels. Additionally, it intends to study consumer typologies regarding their purchasing motivations toward ecolabeled food products to determine possible differences in socioeconomic variables, consumption, and consumer knowledge for these products. To this aim, a total number of 419 questionnaires were collected in Spain during January–February 2019 and a latent class analysis was implemented to segment consumers. The main findings of this study show three types of consumers (indifferent, committed, and skeptical), which present different characteristics, especially regarding their level of knowledge and consumption patterns. [EconLit Citations: M31, O13, Q13, Q56].

The increasing use of internet, especially the proliferation of social networks has offered companies of all sectors the opportunity to keep in contact with their consumers; getting their feedbacks and complains on a daily basis and even to create short online chains enabling consumers to buy their products. This trend is found to be rather limited in the case of food products. The main objective of this article is to deal with consumer’s perceptions towards the potential use of social media to create online short supply chains for food. Projective techniques (Sentence completion tasks) have been used in this study. As, they allow researchers to uncover motivations, emotions and beliefs that drive consumer’s perception and behavior which may not be detected by straightforward questioning. The findings of this study have allowed to obtain insight into those aspects that consumers regard as opportunities or barriers of such potential short food chains. The main aspect is to put food enterprises in the picture about what is going on in consumer’s mind. This might open new possibilities for food businesses to develop a new short food chain.

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