ENHANCING OF GREEN COMPETITIVENESS IN LATVIA: CASE STUDY OF DEVELOPING MARKETING STRATEGY FOR ORGANIC BEEF PRODUCTS.

Nowadays, the role of healthy and sustainable consumption is increasing in Latvia. This trend focuses on animal welfare issues, promotion of organic products and enhancing of local businesses' green competiveness. Owing to the growing demand for organic products, the number of organic farms in Latvia is increasing. However, not all local producers are aware of their marketing strategy's compliance with the real situation in the market. Today, customers' needs are more sophisticated and they are knowledgeable about organic product supply, thus market players have to operate in the conditions of growing competition and more precisely adapt their product positioning and marketing strategies to the value system of today's consumers. On the one hand, organic food market policies and labelling system complies with European Union approaches, but on the other hand, Latvian farmers pay insufficient attention to target-oriented marketing activities, often relying only to word-of-mouth marketing and personal selling, which in the age of digital economy are becoming less efficient. The paper presents an overview of the development of organic farming in Latvia and analysis of contemporary marketing tools for promotion of organic niche products on the example of organic beef products. Based on scientific literature findings related to various aspects of consumption and study conducted in Latvia on consumer behavior in internet, the authors suggest organic beef producers to take advantages of micromarketing strategy for promotion of their products in Latvia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]