Organizing and Conducting Future Research

 General Considerations.

 The nature of marketing problems varies widely with the degree to which a

 particular economy has been transformed from an agriculturally based rural economy

 toward a more urban based, market oriented economy. In countries which are still

 predominantly rural, marketing problems center around improvements in the function-

 ing of local markets as providers of simple farm inputs, and household necessities

 and as trading centers for basic food commodities produced and consumed within

 the local area or region. As an economy becomes more urbanized, food production

 and distribution takes on a higher priority in development plans with greater

 attention to improving physical infrastructure (transportation, processing,

 storage) and to policies and programs designed to stimulate production and

 facilitate system coordination. As the industrialization process continues, new

 technologies for processing and distributing food, more complex logistical and

 institutional arrangements and increased participation of government agencies

 in planning and carrying out marketing programs usually occur.

 In many developing countries there are dual agricultural production-marketing

subsystems, one oriented towards export markets and the other towards domestic

food needs. The export oriented subsystem is typically better organized in terms

of pricing and handling procedures and often involve large scale parastatal

agencies or multi-national corporations with vertically coordinated production-

marketing programs. The export subsystems play an important role in bringing

new technologies and management innovations into less developed country agri-

cultural sectors.

 Whatever the level of industrialization and urbanization, there is a need to

approach marketing research in LDCs from a "food systems" perspective where the

interdependencies of the various stages in the farm production-assembly-

processing and distribution process can be taken into consideration. The "food

systems" perspective that has evolved in U. S. agricultural marketing research