Determinants of Market Channel Choices by Vegetable Farmers in Sri Lanka

Purpose: The traditional vegetable supply chain in Sri Lanka is that the majority of farmers are small-scale farmers who have not had the ability or capacity to meet the final customer directly. As a result, more than 90% of the supply and distribution of vegetables is managed by a limited number of private intermediaries. It causes to distribute low profitability for producers and higher prices for consumers. The main aim of the study is to investigate factors that concurrently underpin Sri Lankan vegetable farmers' decision-making and influence their market channel choice.

Methods: Drawing on the prior studies socio-economic, institutional, and marketing factors were selected. The primary data was collected from 150 vegetable farmers in Central province through a structured questionnaire. The cross-tabulation and ordinal regression analysis were utilized to identify the significant factors.

Findings: The cross-tabulation analysis results indicated that there are significant differences in the farmers’ market channel choices in relation to various socio-economic, institutional, and marketing factors. The ordinal regression analysis revealed that socio-economic factors like age, gender, education level, number of family members; institutional factors such as distance to the nearest marketplace, access to market information, farm size; and marketing factors like price offer, network build significantly affect the market channel choices of the farmers.

Implications: This study is useful to identify relationships between these variables and marketing channel choices can be further researched and these relationships can be utilized to enhance the knowledge and practices of farmers about selecting effective market channels.

Originality: The study makes a unique and substantive contribution to the knowledge of vegetable farmers' decision-making about market channel choice in Sri Lanka and theoretically contributes to the role of socio-economic, institutional, and marketing aspects in predicting potential market choices.