Regionale Lebensmittel: Sprechen Kunden und Unternehmendie gleiche Sprache?

The combination of organic and regional marketing might provide an opportunity to render small organic shops more successful again. The term regional has no legal regulation and consumers as well as scientists have many different understandings which aspects are involved with it and how to define it. The objective of this study is to develop sophisticated criteria for the analysis of the different conceptions consumers have in mind when it comes to local food. For this purpose 261 consumers in five organic shops located in different German areas where asked in open interviews. The results show that the distance between the place of production/cultivation and the consumers´ home is an important aspect for local organic food. But the definition of local food differs between Northern and Southern Germany as well as between consumers in cities and those in villages.