Motivations Underlying Consumers’ Preference for Farmers’ Markets in Klang Valley: A Means-End Chain Approach

In an increasingly competitive market environment, understanding why consumers purchase fresh produce from farmers’ markets is pivotal to understanding the markets’ value and to strengthening the rural economy. This is the first study to employ a means-end chain (MEC) framework to analyze the motivations underlying consumer preference for farmers’ markets. The linkages between these motivators are important steps in understanding why consumers purchase fresh produce from farmers’ markets. Based on in-depth interviews with 212 shoppers at the farmers’ markets in the Klang Valley, Malaysia, we identified the attributes ‘fresh’, ‘nearby’, ‘variety’, and ‘cheap’ as the means of achieving self-directed personal values (e.g., ‘expenses are better managed’), security values (‘live longer’), and benevolent values (e.g., ‘close the ties’). The insights gained should prove useful to policy-makers and to the farmers’ market sector, allowing them to more effectively communicate with consumers from the basis of a better understanding of the attributes, benefits, and personal values influencing them.