Market Farming

["jay gee" <jgj23 AT mindspring.com>]

Phil From Iowa wrote:

> I would saythat the market manager does not want any competition in the 
> market for themselves.  This market manager would have to show me a rule 
> that 
> has been in place that only so many people can sell tomatoes and peppers.  
> This is not market management but market control and something needs to be 
> done to get rid of the market manager.

Based on what people have said about market managers,
there seem to be three types (with minor variations):

I.)     People who know and understand what they
        are doing.  These people run the market for
        the benefit of both farmers and consumers,
        providing a wide variety or traffic inducing
        products and competition to make for pricing
        based on competitive quality.  They use
        advertising to build the market brand and
        increase buying traffic over time;

II.)    People who don't know what they are doing.
        These people do what they are told by the
        farmers who they are trying to please.  They
        do not understand retailing or the laws of the
        jungle when it comes to competition.  They do
        not understand the need to build a bigger,
        better market as a means of having the market
        survive and prosper;

III.)   People who took the job because nobody else
        would.  People in this category have another
        full time occupation and may understand what
        they are doing in the market or may not.  It is the
        luck of the draw.  The problem here is that the
        market's needs may get less than satisfactory
        attention because the average individual needs
        to sleep sometime.

Steve faces a Type II market manager with the result being that
everybody in town -- farmers, consumers, manager -- loses.

> We have tried to do some TV adds in Sept.  but have felt that it was not 
> reaching the right target market.  After school starts we seem to only lose 
> about 10% of our normal crowd of people but we still have not lost our 
> regular buyers that come every week regardless if it is rains or the sun 
> shines. 

Besides advertising, every successful market should be annually
surveying its consumers to learn who they are in a demographic
sense.  This means not only learning about basic traits like age,
income, family size, home Zip Code, etc., but also learning about
likes and dislikes when it comes to media choices such as newspaper
reading, TV watching and programs preferred, and radio listening and
programs preferred.  When surveying news gathering habits,
find out whether people watch the Weather Channel, local
TV news or CNN, etc., for their news intake, or read papers.

Dated surveys should be taken at random, without duplication,
over the whole market season (after traffic drops off, too)
and tabulated over the winter.  This should be done every
two to three years.

Once gathered, this information establishes statistical baselines
which let you see when things are changing on a market
affecting scale and also helps you spend advertising dollars
so that they bring the highest return.


Jay Gee
not a farmer -- but interested in farming