Market Readiness Tool Helping Value-Added Agriculture

Audio provided as a service to farm broadcasters by the Ag Marketing Resource Center

Audio with Cathy Durham, Marketing Economist and Associate Professor at Oregon State University

Suggested Lead: The Oregon State University College of Agricultural Sciences Food Innovation Center has put together a new program called the Market Research for Market Readiness Protocol. It’s designed to help entrepreneurial food makers and value-added farmers evaluate new products they’re developing for market. The tool is based on consumer testing. Cathy Durham, a Marketing Economist and Associate Professor at Oregon State University, talks about how the program got started…listen here.

Cut 1        :14        OC…”the market”        PROGRAM    

Durham says most of the people who’ve used the program are food entrepreneurs. She says there are two parts of the research protocol and talks about some of the information marketers can get out of the research…tape 

Cut 2        :41        OC…”for them”            RESEARCH

The second part of the research deals with consumer purchasing intent…tape

Cut 3        :20        OC…”profitable price”        CONSUMERS    
    

The program got started with help from a USDA grant. She found that several entrepreneurs they worked with in the past didn’t have the budget that bigger companies did for market research. It took two to three years to get the program off the ground and she talks about how it was designed…tape

Cut 4        :13        OC…”from that”            details    
    

The materials are available on a web page, easily found by doing a Google search for “market research for market readiness.” It can also be found at the Oregon State University College of Food Science homepage. Learn more about added-value agriculture and marketing online at AgMRC dot org (www.agmrc.org).

###