Profiles of sheep and goat farmers' marketing strategy in the region of East Macedonia and Thrace in Greece

This study aims to profile the marketing strategies that the sheep and goat farmers follow in the Region of East Macedonia and Thrace (EMTh) in Greece based upon their distribution channel selection, farm and personal characteristics. Data were collected through personal interviews with 343 sheep and goat Greek farmers in the Region of East Macedonia-Thrace. Three marketing strategies were identified: (i) cost focus, (ii) production orientation and (iii) return focus strategy. The main difference between strategies was that the return focused farmers were mainly medium scale livestock producers whereas cost focused farmers were large scale livestock farmers. The production-orientated farmers had better financial performance than the other two groups resulting from a focus on improvement of their productivity.