Abstract
In recent years, farmers' markets have attracted considerable public attention in Japan. These farmers' markets can be described as stores managed by farmers who have organized an agricultural union for the purpose of ensuring a steady income. The number of such stores has been increasing and therefore, farmers have to compete with not only traditional methods, but also new management technologies. The purpose of this paper is to propose an information and communications technology (ICT) solution to overcome the problems experienced by farmers' markets. We propose an inventory management method based on vender inventory management (VMI). We have developed information systems that can support sales management and inventory management. We also introduced the information systems to a farmer market which is an agricultural producer's cooperative corporation. The system provides the following functions: 1) the information is utilized by the farmers, and 2) they promote the farmers' market. The systems make it possible to reinforce the differentiation and competitiveness of the store, and provide fresher crops according to demand. Moreover, providing the crop information gives customers a sense of security in terms of crop quality and increases convenience of the store.
