Do Consumers in Croatia Read Labels on Fresh Vegetables?

A significant share of supplied vegetables in Croatian market is imported, and very often these products are of lower quality and prices when compared to domestic vegetables. Therefore, in order to be competitive, domestic producers have to adjust their offer to consumers' needs and wishes, which means they have to know behaviour and attitudes of their consumers. The aim of this paper is to determine consumers’ buying behaviour, which vegetable attributes are perceived as most important and whether Croatian consumers read labels which accompany fresh vegetable and how much do they trust them. A survey was conducted on a sample of 417 consumers of fresh vegetables in the Republic of Croatia. Research results showed that majority of consumers buy fresh vegetables in supermarkets and in city markets, with almost half of them purchasing vegetables mostly only in one sales channel. The most important vegetable attributes are vegetable quality and origin but also labels that guarantee origin and quality. Most of the respondents read fresh vegetable labels frequently or occasionally. However, consumers are not very satisfied with the existing labels and they do not particularly trust the information they contain. The obtained results can be used by producers and traders to develop labelling and positioning strategy for domestic vegetables.