Niche marketing and farm diversification processes: Insights from New Zealand and Canada

Research Papers

Introduction

Niche markets and sustainable agriculture

Sustainable agriculture is often associated with small operations and non-corporate producers¹. Although their 'small' status may increase the attractiveness of their outputs to some consumers², small non-corporate and local agricultural producers do not possess the resources of their major corporate competitors in most agricultural produce markets. This resource mismatch not only has disadvantages with such small players in terms of direct economies of scale in production, but also in terms of their capacity to develop, manage and sustain viable channels of market distribution within the mainstream food markets, which also offer economies of scale to larger marketers^3,4.

For these reasons, sustainable agricultural producers tend to develop and retain a presence within small and discrete sub-markets⁵. These markets are commonly described as 'niche' markets within the sustainable food production literature⁶. Research that uses this concept is well represented within the literature^7-10.

Although the term 'niche market' is widely used within the sustainable agricultural production literature, references to it have usually been incidental to other arguments and objectives. There is no research available that directly addresses the process of niche marketing as a marketing management process in its own right, and as the basis by which small sustainable food producers may establish and maintain a presence in the marketplace using a smaller resource base.

This paper makes a specific contribution in this area by demonstrating the means by which small agricultural producers can become successful niche marketers. This paper first considers the nature of niche markets, and then examines the mainstream/corporate niche market development literature. The blackcurrant industry is then introduced as an industry which particularly suits the study of niche marketing in an agricultural context. A detailed case study of niche marketing practice within this industry is then presented using populations from Canada and New Zealand. The findings are then discussed with an emphasis on how practice in this agricultural industry differs from commercial practice. This paper concludes with a discussion on the relevance and implications of these findings to sustainable agriculture's growth and development.

The nature of niche markets

There is a strong link between successful sustainable agricultural practice and niche...