Communicating trust? The role of Facebook for establishing producer-consumer relations

Summary

Values-based supply chains depend highly on consumer trust. Consumers expect that they can be trusted to (for instance) comply with certain production standards, contribute protecting the environment, secure that producers receive a fair price or that ways of transportation are shortened and an added-value for the region is achieved. Particularly in direct marketing, with (at least potentially) interpersonal exchange relationships between producers and consumers, trust in these attributes is highly developed and distinctively strong. However, while values-based food systems like organic food still experience an ongoing and unbroken popularity, they enter increasingly larger and extended market structures in which the direct contact between producers and consumers is greatly reduced or not given at all anymore. Therefore, one decisive challenge for growing values-based food enterprises, besides aspects of infrastructure or logistics, is the question how trust and transparency can be maintained and secured. Web-based communication processes (like smart phone apps or social media) may be seen as one promising option to substitute direct face to face relationships.
Within the European research project ‘HealthyGrowth-From niche to volume with integrity and trust‘, a number of qualitative case studies of growing organic supply chains have been analyzed on the use of web-based and particularly social media. The results show why and in how far enterprises make use of them and highlight the potentials and limits to foster trust, transparency and credibility.