Abstract

                                In the scenario of extending the organized retail markets to tier II and III cities of India, a preliminary inquiry in Ranga Reddy district highlighted the non-participation of the vegetable growers in the retail marketing system. To understand further, the knowledge level that contributes to the behavior is examined in this study. A total of 150 vegetable growers of the peri-urban area were selected by simple random sampling and were approached with a structured interview schedule. A teacher-made test was posed to elucidate the knowledge in 4 aspects - awareness, marketing process, pricing, and additional services provided. It was found that 64.00 per cent of the respondents had a medium knowledge of retail markets. The correlation analysis disclosed a significant positive relationship of knowledge level with education, the area under vegetables, market orientation, market intelligence, information-seeking behavior at 1 per cent, and economic motivation, landholding at 5 per cent. It was observed that age and experience in vegetable farming are negatively significant with 0.05 per cent of probability. Execution of -step-wise regression to fit the model where education, market orientation, the area under vegetable production, annual income, economic motivation, decision-making ability with unstandardized coefficients 0.994, 0.953, 0.482, - 4.285E-6, 0.197, 0.222 respectively were found significant with 39.7 per cent of coefficient of determination (R2). Converting knowledge into actions requires interactions with retail market agencies that build trust.

Key words : Knowledge; Peri-urban; Retail market; Vegetable farmers