ViewpointPolicy developments of consumer's acceptance of traditional products innovation: The case of environmental sustainability and shelf life extension of a PGI Italian cheese
Introduction
Typical and traditional food products are considered important elements of European culture (Committee of the Regions, 1996, Ilbery and Kneafsey, 1999). They contribute to the development and sustainability of rural areas and to food product differentiation, providing consumers to a wider range in food choice (Avermaete et al., 2004). The quality of these products is linked to the characteristics of the area of production and, in particular, to the use of specific raw materials and food processes. For each food product, these aspects are reported within a specific production disciplinary, previously approved by the EU, to which producers must strictly comply with. Furthermore, the quality of typical and traditional food products is guaranteed to consumers through the use of specific European certifications (Protected Designation of Origin – PDO, Protected Geographical Indication – PGI, Traditional Speciality Guaranteed – TSG), attesting the origin of products and the reliability of production disciplinary to the European norms. PDO, PGI and TSG certifications encourage diversification of agricultural production, protect product brands from misuse and imitation and help consumers to meet their requirements through specific and clear product information. As a quality signal, these certifications reduce confusion and search costs (Dimara, Petrou, & Skuras, 2004). For these reasons, consumers' attitudes have been positively changing over time towards the purchase of typical and traditional food products (Guerrero et al., 2009, Guerrero et al., 2010). In particular, Skuras and Vakrou (2002), and Schamel (2003) argue that consumers are willing to pay more for a differentiated and regional product, while Ribeiro and Santos, 2004, Ribeiro and Santos, 2005 state that the region of origin has a positive image/reputation on consumers' attitude. Other examples highlight the complexity of the effects of typical and traditional products and their variability depending on the product's attributes. Bonnet and Simioni (2001), estimate, through the use of a mixed logit with random parameters on scanner data, the effect of French GI of Camembert cheese on consumers' preferences. The authors conclude that consumers assign a certain value to PGI, although a considerable attention is given to the brand. Van der Lans, Van Ittersum, De Cicco, and Loseby (2001) analyse Italian consumers' preferences for Italian extra-virgin olive oil. Using a conjoint analysis on regional data for the Lazio region, they find that the region of origin and GI, have a positive effect on preferences of some consumer segments.
The effects of changing attitudes towards traditional and typical food products can also be seen under a producer point of view. Bontemps, Bouamra-Mechemache, and Simioni (2012) provide a macro/policy-vision in support of quality labels and certifications for the competitiveness (and the survivor) of French cheese firms.
Nevertheless the abovementioned positive consumer's attitude towards these products, typical and traditional product firms still face the challenge to improve their products by means of different innovations. In the food sector, innovation is referred to as the key to increase competitiveness in global food markets and a significant strategy to obtain growth (Avermaete et al., 2004, Gellynck et al., 2007). On the other hand, in the context of traditional and typical foods, the concept of innovation is rather controversial (European Commission, 2007, Jordana, 2000). Generally, for these products, process innovations are not common, since raw materials and food processes must adhere to disciplinary production regulations, while product innovations oriented to ameliorate only few product characteristics are prevalent.
Innovations, in traditional foods, may be seen in terms of improvements to safety, healthiness and/or convenience attributes of the products (Guerrero et al., 2009). They mainly pertain to packaging innovations and changes in product composition, product size and form or new ways of using the product (Gellynck & Kühne, 2008). Other innovations may be addressed to product image through packaging, labelling, brands, and/or additional certifications in accordance with the indications of disciplinary production regulations. Finally, the implementation of market and organisational innovations can be valuable for traditional food products but their potential is not yet realised or recognised by all members in the traditional food sector chain (Gellynck & Kühne, 2008).
For the successful introduction of innovations in traditional food products, it is important to have a good understanding of consumer acceptance towards innovations (Linnemann, Benner, Verkerk, & van Boekel, 2006). Over the past years, consumer's innovation acceptance of traditional and typical foods has received minor attention from the literature. There is very little research in this sense and it is still far from giving us a clear understanding of the matter. It is on this ground that our study moves its foundations. To the best of our knowledge, only few studies have focussed on consumer's innovation acceptance in the traditional food sector (Guerrero et al., 2009, Kühne et al., 2010, Singh, 2006). In particular, the literature lacks of case study focussed on specific foods. With respect to traditional food sector, current literature argues that European consumers show different degrees of acceptance for innovations in traditional foods. In particular, European consumers seem to accept well packaging innovations because these do not modify the main characteristics of traditional food products and provide, at the same time, benefits in terms of a longer shelf life (Guerrero et al., 2009). Kühne et al. (2010) argue on the existence of consumer acceptability towards convenience-oriented innovations. European consumers seem willing to accept innovations oriented to healthier and safer products and packaging innovation which extends product shelf life without compromising the sensory properties of food products. In these and other similar studies (Singh, 2006), the existence of cultural differences in consumer's innovation acceptance, both within and between European countries, is another key characteristic for traditional food products. On this aspect, Guerrero et al. (2009) discuss on the importance to conduct research also at a specific country level or a specific traditional food product.
On this background, the present paper focuses on a typical Italian cheese and examines how Italian consumers perceive two different types of innovation, in particular, shelf life extension, meant as a convenience oriented innovation, and environmental certification of a product, intended as innovation in terms of product image. We analyse and compare these two types of innovation through a consumer behaviour approach. The purpose of the study is to shed some light on the relationship between shelf life extension of a typical food product and sustainability issues and to trace a bridge between innovation, tradition and environmental protection. The main outcomes of this work provide suggestions, under a micro perspective, for firms involved in the production of traditional and typical products; and under a macro view, for bottom-up sustainable food policies creating synergies with current top-down European food quality policies and innovation strategies in typical food products.
Section snippets
Consumer's innovation acceptance in traditional food products
Current studies, conducted in different European contexts, show that, under a consumer behaviour approach and in the food sector, agent's attitudes towards innovation in traditional food products have links with the culture of a particular country and/or group of countries. Several authors (Guerrero et al., 2009, Kühne et al., 2010, Singh, 2006) argue on various degrees of attitudes. In particular, Singh (2006), in a comparative study across EU countries, highlights how Belgian consumers seem
Objectives of the present work
Within the framework described in the above sections, the present study analyses and compares two types of innovations in the traditional food sector – shelf life extension and environmental sustainability. Our main aim is to investigate the potential relationships between these innovations and the existence of a consumer acceptance as food attributes and discuss perspectives for policy developments.
For this work we study the case of the ‘Canestrato di Moliterno’ cheese. This is a high fat dry
Theoretical framework
The theoretical proposition is based on the theory of value (Lancaster, 1966) and the random utility model proposed by McFadden (1974). Choice experiments (CE) tools combine the two theories to assess consumer preferences. These are valuable instruments largely used in current literature to estimate the economic value of non-market goods (i.e public goods) and their attributes (Campbell et al., 2012, Day et al., 2012, Nocella et al., 2012, Nocella and Kennedy, 2012, Scarpa and Del Giudice, 2004
Discussion and policy developments
Consumer's innovation acceptance in traditional and typical foods are not extensively analysed in the literature. The main reason is that, until recently, innovation in the traditional food sector is seen as a controversial concept (Jordana, 2000). For these products, in fact, innovation is very challenging (Amilien et al., 2005, Gellynck and Kühne, 2008, Jordana, 2000). The work proposed in this paper is an attempt to investigate consumer's innovation acceptance in the traditional food sector (
Conclusions
The present paper is an attempt to analyse consumers' innovation acceptance for a specific traditional food, with the aim to analyse the relationships between the shelf life of a product and environmental sustainability, meant as two different product innovation attributes. This approach represents a novelty for the study of consumer innovation preferences in traditional food sector, and can be seen as a pilot approach for similar topics.
The outcomes of the survey show that consumers positively
Acknowledgements
We kindly acknowledge three anonymous referees for their invaluable comments. These have notably improved an earlier version of the manuscript. We are also grateful to the participants of the 2013 Annual Conference of the Italian Society of Agricultural Economics for the feedback received. We remain indebted to Mrs Miriam Spalatro, PhD student in Economics at the Department of Economics, University of Foggia (Italy), for her precious help with the survey. Any remaining errors are the sole
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