9 pages., via online journal., In the last few years, the contribution of the agricultural sector to tourism has been increasingly evident. Agritourism provides the possibility to have a green holiday experience and allows farmers to diversify their income. In the tourist sector, communication is decisive in determining consumption choices, and the Web plays an important role. Considering that the Internet can bring potential benefits and reach new customers, it is important that websites are complete and attractive. This paper evaluates agritourism websites in an Italian region (Sicily) to analyse the strategic choices made by farmers. This study uses the eMICA methodological approach to analyse the quality of the websites and a cluster analysis to find homogeneous groups of farms. The results indicate that there is a large group of Sicilian agritourism providers that have been slow in taking advantage of the new opportunities offered by the Web, whereas another group, which is less numerous, makes use of social networking tools, demonstrating web 2.0 communication.
Pilar, Ladislav (author), Kvasnickova, Lucie (author), Gresham, George (author), Polakova, Jana (author), Rojik, Stanislav (author), and Petkov, Rosen (author)
Format:
Journal article
Publication Date:
2018-09-30
Published:
International
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 7 Document Number: D10283
via online journal, The amount of European farm acreage devoted to organic foods has been increasing each year over the past three decades, as farmers strive to meet consumer demand for these products. To understand what factors drive this demand, researchers have focused on the end customers' perception of organic food and their motivations to purchase it. The standard research methods are questionnaires and literature review; however, these tend to be expensive, time consuming, or involve work with secondary data. This paper compares 14 studies carried out using standard research methods with the results of a social network analysis based on 344,231 posts by 73,380 Instagram users. The result of the comparison shows that in the case of organic food, the characteristic of "healthy" is the most important one to customers, both based on questionnaire surveys and the social network analysis. Moreover, based on these two analyses, 4 key areas can be identified as factors that are important to customers buying organic food: (1) health consciousness, (2) ecological motives, (3) tasty and (4) hedonism. As the results indicate, social network analysis can be considered a method with a high potential for gaining a greater insight into customers' perceptions.
Online open access via AgEcon Search., Authors used a survey to examine the information and communication technology (ICT) usage and attitudes by enterprises operating in the agri-food sector. "...competitive advantage my be reached using ITC solutions for widening and maintaining relations through a more effective information flow with partners and consumers."
