Do marketing strategies exist in farmer's markets?

During my time here in Chile, I have been to the Wednesday/Saturday farmers market here in Vina Del Mar, on three separate occasions. While this twice weekly event seems to be a pretty standard type of local food market, I have begun to wonder if there is any type of marketing that vendors use in order to try and attract customers to their stalls. Many of the stands sell the same types of fruits and vegetables so they must have some tactics to try and differentiate themselves from the others. The first and most prominent type of marketing that I observed was a type of relationship marketing. On more than one occasion, I viewed customers pass several stands and bee-line towards a particular one that did not seem different from the others. When the customers approached, the vendors smiled and greeted these people as if they had known each other for years. I could not make out what they said to each other but I can imagine that it went somewhat like: "Hello Mr. and Mrs. Smith! Your in luck today because I just picked a fresh batch of strawberries especially for you. You have got to try them." These vendors seem to have created a relationship with the customers and they market their products specifically to these people, possibly at a discount. In return for the kindness and fresh products, the customers show their loyalty by constantly returning. The fix their "marketing", what they say, specifically for whom is showing up at their stand and what they have previously learned about these people. This is by far the best type of marketing for these vendors.
The second type of marketing that I noticed was a simple hawking of goods to the general public. In the middle of the market, one can hear ten different people shouting prices, products and discounts to nobody in particular. While this is not nearly an effective type of marketing, it doesn't have a target customer base, it is free and extremely easy to implement. A vendor can shout all day long and perhaps gain a a few customers from this, but most often people know where they are going and won't be attracted by a vocal advertisement. In fact, for some foreign customers this may even scare them away as people will become nervous by the aggressive sales tactics.
The final marketing tactic that I noticed in this market, was the set-up of one vendors stands versus the others. The organization, cleanliness and clarity of each of these stands helped to determine how many people would purchase something there. If you look at the two pictures below, you can see that they are organized well, the prices and the names of the fruits are clearly shown, there are scales available for people to weigh products and the colors of the produce simply make the stand look good. This stand had people purchasing things constantly while some surrounding stands had only a few stragglers purchasing minimal amounts of produce. The best stands marketed themselves as being "fresh" and "locally grown", while still keeping the look and ease of shopping as a large grocery store.








In conclusion, I have been to realize that even the most informal and unofficial markets have some sort of sales and marketing techniques implemented within them. This farmers market included three distinct types that I noticed and perhaps there are several more. The type of marketing and organization of it greatly influenced the amount of customers that purchased goods at a particular stand. I believe that any vendor with even the slightest amount of marketing knowledge could create a great advantage for themselves and thus see sales and customer relationships increase greatly.