Maine’s Artisan Cheesemakers: The Opportunities and Challenges of Being an Artist, Scientist, Agriculturalist, Alchemist, and Entrepreneur

Welcomer, Stephanie A.; MacRae, Jean D.; Davis, Brady; Searles, Jacob

doi:10.53558/spsj8482

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…When a small-scale farmer shifts from streamlined, B2B, largely pre-determined sales processes to the much more abstract and nuanced B2C market for non-commodity and value-added products, she is forced to perform all of the functions of a major corporation with infinitesimal fractions of the time, resources, or experience. Recent research has demonstrated that this gap in knowledge, skills, and resources necessary to uncover and creatively meet consumer needs is a primary concern of small-scale farmers and craft and artisan food producers [43][44][45].…”

Section: Unique Challenges Of Small-scale Farmer Producersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Designing and Distinguishing Meaningful Artisan Food Experiences

Carter

Welcomer

2021

Sustainability

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We examine consumer expectations about how specialty versus conventional food products affect well-being and how small, artisan producers can use that information to design better customer experiences. Drawing on recent work examining the costs and benefits of pleasure- and meaning-based consumption, we investigate whether consumer expectations that specialty products are more meaningful lead to increased desire for additional product information. We selectively sampled from the target market of interest: high-involvement consumers who regularly consume a food (cheese) in both more typical and specialty forms. The authors manipulate product type (typical versus special) within participant and measure differences in expected pleasure and meaning as well as a variety of behaviors related to and preference for additional product information. We find that these high-involvement consumers expect special food products to provide both more meaningful (hypothesized) and more pleasurable consumption experiences (not hypothesized) than typical food products. Consistent with our theory, consumer use of, search for, and preference for additional product information was greater for special products. A causal mediation analysis revealed that expectations of meaning mediate the relationship between product type and utility of product information, an effect which persists controlling for the unexpected difference in expected pleasure.

show abstract

Section: Unique Challenges Of Small-scale Farmer Producersmentioning

confidence: 99%