Regional Products Availability – Comparison: Czech Republic, Germany and Austria in ČT ČERNÉ OVCE

On Thursday, October 19th, the Head of the Department of International Business and expert on international marketing Ing. Petr Král, Ph.D. together with the Deputy Head and expert in the field of commercial communications, branding and retail marketing doc. Ing. Přemysl Průša, Ph.D., took part in the TV Program ČT Černé ovce. This time the focus of the episode was the comparison of the availability of 11 different regional products (fruit, dairy products, bread, juice and others) in the Czech Republic, Austria and Germany – specifically in the towns of České Budějovice, Wels and Pasov. The supermarket with the largest market share was selected in each country – EDEKA in Germany, Billa in Austria and Albert in the Czech Republic.

Germany came out on top with 7 of the 11 foods being regional and the remaining 4 being domestic. Regional foods were similarly available in the Austrian Billa – 6 regional and 5 domestic products were available. In Austria, it was difficult to find regional meat products; in the end the crew found ham from 200 km away. Ing. Petr Král, Ph.D. describes the situation: “However, it is a brand that can hardly be considered regional when it is sold in other neighboring countries. We can see Hungarian label on it, even though it is advertised as regional.” Dairy products fared better in comparison: “It is a completely local product. In fact, the packaging shows that too, because you have all these durable tetra-packages and then glass bottles in between in crates to let you know straight away that you can buy a local product here …” At the egg shelf, customers could even scan a QR code to find out specific information about the farmer and the farm that supplies them.

The Czech Republic placed last in the comparison and regional products were difficult and time-consuming to find – only 3 chosen food items were regional and 1 item surveyed did not even come from the Czech Republic. “This truly shows that there is definitely a pressure for an optimal price-quality ratio and there are almost no regional foods here,” summarizes doc. Ing. Přemysl Průša, Ph.D. “The chains can and should expand their offer to include regional products and if they do offer them, it also needs to be properly labelled and separated from the rest.”

The full report can be found in the CT Archive here.