Preferencias del consumidor de productos alimenticios locales

Local consumption of food is growing up all over the world and is creating a new trend which contributes to reducing the ecological footprint. However, in Mexico City this trend has not reached its full potential yet. To boost local consumption in this region, it is key to know all pertinent consumers preferences; particularly those shown by housewives who usually purchase food products. Hence, the objective of this work has been to investigate the preferences of housewives (consumers) regarding the acquisition of local food products in Mexico City. To this end, a survey has been designed and applied through digital media; the questionnaire has been validated through a pilot application and later used with a sample of 410 housewives between 25 and 59 years of age. A set of specific and significant sociodemographic characteristics have been examined, as well as consumption habits of current and desirable food products. The main results of this research have shown that: 1) Low consumption of local products: only 20% of the products purchased by the respondents are local; 2) Various sources of food supply, the most prominent with 32.2 and 25.1% are supermarket and market respectively; the least with 6.3, 6.1 and 4.1% are central supply, directly with producer and online purchases; 3) The great urbanization of Mexico City limits the direct purchase to the producer; 4) There is a high interest on the part of consumers to increase purchases directly to the producer (95.6%), and 89.3% would like to increase the consumption of organic and / or artisanal products. A major finding of this research is that: establishing close links between the producer and the consumer becomes a great logistical challenge for the manager of the production-distribution-consumption system.