CRGOURMETCOFFEE.COM: AN E-COMMERCE PLATFORM TO SOLVE THE COFFEE PARADOX IN COSTA RICA

The coffee paradox is the phenomenon by which the coffee prices received by farmers/producers in developing countries have been increasingly lower, despite a growing demand for this product. This situation affects coffee production in most coffee-producing countries and forces many producers to leave this economic activity. Behind this problem is the fact that coffee is considered an agricultural commodity. Nevertheless, the development of specialty coffee in recent years offers opportunities to de-commoditize this product, allowing coffee farmers to distinguish themselves from the rest. In doing so, they can obtain better prices for their coffee. Although Costa Rica is a country that has conditions to achieve this process, the same must be accompanied by appropriate marketing mechanisms. E-commerce can be used to assist this process. In this paper, we present the background and the design and development considerations for an electronic platform to market Costa Rican roasted coffee through e-commerce, referred to as crgourmetcoffee.com (https://www.crgourmetcoffee.com). This system is proposed as a solution to the coffee paradox un Costa Rica. In this regard, crgourmetcoffee.com is aimed at enabling Costa Rican coffee farmers to sell its coffee directly to final consumers in developed countries, eliminating intermediaries, and thus allowing producers to obtain higher price margins. Besides presenting the underlying principles for this platform, we also discuss the steps taken to make the existing prototype of this system into an operational marketing mechanism and the challenges ahead.