Societal stakeholders have started to rethink agricultural supply chains and discuss strategies to improve its resilience to be better prepared for future disruptions. One of the main pillars of such a resilient system is regional farming and distribution. At Digital Marketing & eCommerce (DMeC) conference 2023 at University of Barcelona Robert Zniva and myself had the pleasure to present our research with Johanna Muggenhuber and Tanja Doppler. Based on a literature review and a two-step qualitative study design we identify and categorize farmers’ direct-to-consumer activities and investigate the role of technology in this context.

Our findings show that while none of the investigated shop formats can compete with one-stop-shopping at traditional super- or hypermarkets technology-facilitated direct marketing can help farmers to diversify and establish a second, complementary pillar of their business model.