Digital visibility of regional agricultural brands in sustainable food systems: exploratory evidence from Zhejiang Province, China

Digital visibility is an important channel through which agricultural products and brands enter consumer information search. This exploratory study examines the online search visibility of agricultural brand and product keywords in Zhejiang Province, China. A candidate pool of 126 official brand/product entries was constructed, but only 21 keywords (16.7%) had retrievable and sufficiently interpretable Baidu Index data. The resulting non-random, availability-based analytical sample comprises 14 specific or brand-related keywords and seven product-category or place-based proxy keywords; it should not be treated as statistically representative of all agricultural brands in Zhejiang. Baidu Index data and Amap geocoding results were used for descriptive statistics, descriptive spatial analysis, keyword-group comparison, and a sensitivity analysis restricted to the 14 specific or brand-related keywords. Digital visibility was highly uneven, and the seven proxy keywords accounted for 84.5% of total search visibility. The sensitivity analysis confirmed uneven visibility among the more specific or brand-related keywords but substantially changed the city ranking, showing that the apparent concentration in several cities was largely proxy-driven. Because the 21 keyword observations were nested within only nine cities and multiple observations shared identical city-level characteristics, no inferential model of regional socioeconomic determinants was estimated. The findings therefore concern retrievable digital visibility, not actual sales or market recognition, and highlight the need to link broad product or place awareness to specific, searchable brand identities.