The Rural Digital Economy: the local market as an arena for digital economic consideration and design Alan Chamberlain, Mark Davies, Andy Crabtree, Chris Greenhalgh and Tom Rodden University of Nottingham Computer Science Jubilee Campus +44 (0) 115 951 4251 {first name.last name}@Nottingham.ac.uk ABSTRACT In this paper we present a brief overview of the initial findings from the early stages of a study relating to an IT-based intervention in the context of a rural produce market, in which a user centered approach was taken. Keywords Rural, Ethnography, Participatory Design, Economics, E- commerce, User-Centred Design 1. INTRODUCTION This paper summarises the initial findings of a study that focuses on the rural produce market in west Wales as a site for IT-based intervention, digital economic consideration and design. The findings relate to the initial ethnographic fieldwork, economic understandings of the site and the evolution of a participatory design strategy for developing a Market Portal. This study is part of the Scaling the Rural Enterprise project supported by the Research Councils UK (RCUK) - grant number -·EP/J000604/1 2. THE MARKET SITE 2.1 Economic & Ethnographic Understanding The rural produce market is both a socially and economically complex institution, with a whole plethora of different rules, accountabilities and economic events occurring in one place. The market is space that is: a workplace; an open public arena; a site of leisure; relationships; gossip; food and fun. It isn’t purely a site of economic activity. Black [1] writes, “If we looked at just the economics of markets there would not be a lot of reason for this form of distribution to continue. Economically speaking, markets are amongst the least efficient methods of food distribution and retail…” Yet within the local community the market still proves to be an important place. Of course there are fields such as Economic Anthropology that may be drawn upon to offer research approaches that could combine ethnographic understandings in order to offer the reasoning behind such models, but the existing literature within this field still doesn’t offer an answer in regard to the applied use of findings in respect to systems design. However we thought it still important to take an approach that can offer an insight into the market and the actors involved within the process of bringing things to market, the way they co-operate in order to do this, the technologies that they use and their motivation for being part of the market. The motivations of the stallholder is an important area to understand as it often underlies the reasons behind why the stallholders turn up at the market and the reasoning behind the way they work to produce what they sell. The stallholders report that their motivations are to be, for example environmentally friendly, wanting to promote local food or play a part in the local community”, and they highlight certain aspects of this to describe their produce: “home-reared, organic, high quality and local”. 2.2 Site-based Interviews In order to accomplish our study we carried out a series of 15 site- based interviews combined with participant observation. We found that in regard to supply there were a range of different supply chains: some were relatively large, but mostly small, focusing on local product such as: eggs, meat, cheese, milk, seasonal fruit and vegetables and wood. Supplies from outside Wales were mainly packaging, some fruit and vegetables and spices. The coordination of supply was technologically lightweight, predominantly done through face-to-face interaction and phone calls, with some wholesale deals being done the year before, based on a future crop. The Internet was primarily used for ordering packaging, occasionally people used email (although this was not the norm) and there was one documented use of Excel for inventory and pricing. The research showed a minimal use of the web for trading and there were 4 trader websites, none of which offered online sales, although 2 provided pricing. Only 1 trader used social media as a tool to promote their business (Facebook). Themes started to emerge from the research. There was a focus on sustainable business: these businesses wanted to stay small-scale (“family businesses”), they saw themselves as local suppliers rather than local employers. In some respects this is not surprising considering that in 2011 94.8% of businesses in the county (Ceredigion) in which we are working were classified as micro- businesses (94.5% as a national average) [3]. Another aspect of the market was that some stallholders only traded during the months when there was a greater footfall in the market due to the influx of tourists during the summer season. Also, many such businesses affected by tourism are often family-based [4]. The supply chains were small scale and were largely shaped by seasonal rhythms, particularly in relation to the supply of local goods: meat, dairy produce, vegetables and fish. Furthermore, it has been noted that these seasonal effects impact greatly upon the economic landscape of businesses that relate to the tourist sector [5]. Within the market space there was a real sensitivity to competition: often stallholders would be concerned when other stallholders were selling similar products, for example, eggs. Yet, there was little concern about what was being sold in the wider local context, such as at local high street shops and supermarkets.