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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore farmers’ intentions to engage in food brand development schemes and identify the factors that impact this. Design/methodology/approach By assuming the utility maximization behavior of farmers, based on data collected from 539 fruit and vegetable producers, this study estimates an intention to participate and a willingness to pay model. Findings Three groups of factors determine the utility the farmers derive and subsequently their engagement in brand development. Farm business characteristics include farmers’ age, the attainment of quality certification and cultivated area, while psychological factors include farmers’ attitudes toward local reflections of the brand, perceptions regarding the need for farm business external support and consumers’ interest, as well as farmers’ commitment to quality requirements. Farmers’ strategies related to the share of products sold by cooperatives and to individually use the brand also determine their engagement in a brand development scheme. Research limitations/implications Future research should distinguish producers according to the marketing channel they choose and their industry, and explore the intentions of intermediate marketers. Practical implications Marketing cooperatives should undertake initiatives to develop local brands effectively, taking into consideration the factors that impact farmers’ engagement, while food marketing firms should properly adapt their purchasing and promotion strategies. Public authorities should formulate a policy mix that enhances farmers’ knowledge related to marketing issues and encourages farmers to strengthen their positions in the marketplace. Originality/value The research reveals a strategic proactive behavior of farmers favoring the development of local brands, and provides insights into the factors that impact farmers’ adoption decisions.

This article helps to answer the question of how the diffusion of organic farming could be accelerated by analyzing farmers’ decisions. Given the fragmentation of the research findings, the determinants of farmers’ organic conversion decisions were integrated into a framework that enables a holistic approach to be adopted in research and policy scheduling. The most important factors of the external farm environment are the organic product demand, product price, access to markets, available technologies, education, knowledge transfer, peer networks, society’s attitudes, and subsidy provision. The most important farm characteristics are the farm’s location, farm size, enterprise, expected costs, profits, knowledge, information and communication technology use, farmers’ age, education, gender, off-farm activities, attitudes, and beliefs regarding organic farming and willingness to preserve the environment. Of particular importance are farmers’ satisfaction with economic incentives, the perception of technical problems, and the certification process. Such comprehensive information enables public authorities to bring about changes in the most important factors that effectively accelerate organic conversion decisions and to assess policy implementation. The market participants are facilitated to implement eco-strategies by encouraging farmers to decide to convert. Future research should broaden the sets of factors that are explored, taking into consideration the interactions and time-dependent changes that exist.

The purpose of this study was to illustrate and understand how consumers of cooperative food products could be segmented in the region of Western Greece. For this purpose, a questionnaire survey was undertaken involving almost 500 consumers in the selected region. Consumers were segmented on the basis of their consumption of cooperative products and in association with their attributes and beliefs regarding cooperatives’ products. Τhe performed cluster analysis grouped participants into four distinct groups with different characteristics and perceptions regarding cooperatives’ products. The consumer groups were called “skeptics”, “cooperative”, “passively sensitive”, and “indifferent”. According to the results, in general, participants considered cooperative food products as a safe choice with excellent value for money and contributing to the local society, economy, and sustainability. Segmentation could allow agricultural cooperatives to focus only on those segments of consumers that are willing to pay for cooperative products by allocating all available resources in serving them. The results of this research, even with its limitations, can help directors and marketing executives of agricultural cooperatives to better understand that operating in a specific market could be more effective when targeted at specific segments to help not only the viability of agricultural cooperatives but also their economic development and growth.

Policymakers often assume that farmers with pro-environmental behavior are more likely to follow proper pesticide practices and thus, in order to improve the safety of their pesticide practices, they implement strategies and programs designed to raise environmental awareness among the general public. The aim of this paper is to examine whether pro-environmental behavior can instigate proper pesticide practices among farmers. According to our results, farmers&rsquo, environmental behavior does not affect their pesticide practices and thus strategies aiming at raising environmental awareness among the general public would not prompt them to follow proper pesticide practices. In addition, the respondents reported following overall proper practices such as wearing masks and appropriate clothes during sprayings as well as rinsing the empty containers by performing the triple-rinse method. However, they did not wear gloves during applications, and many disposed the remaining pesticide concentrate to non-arable land. To conclude, in order to improve farmers&rsquo, pesticide practices, strategies and programs specifically designed for farmers must be developed because those addressed to the general public would not be effective. Moreover, certain improper practices found in this study ought to be addressed by policymakers and actors involved in the agricultural sector.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to explore how food-exporting firms assess the importance of relationship characteristics of the supply chain that impact their performance as well as how it relates to export performance indicators.Design/methodology/approachAn online survey was administered across 83 food firms in Greece, assessing the importance of relationship characteristics of the supply chain by using the best–worst scaling technique.FindingsThe most important characteristics relate to the quality of the primary material and the procurement costs and producer prices; these are considered more important by export-oriented food firms compared to non–export-oriented food firms. Characteristics that relate to the relationship between members of the agri-food supply chain and the interorganizational business systems and governance mechanisms are also considered of average importance. Characteristics related to the adoption of differentiation strategies are considered least important.Practical implicationsProducers should emphasize the quality and prices of their product as well as establish collaborations with food firms. Food firms need to emphasize interorganizational business systems and governance mechanisms that reduce procurement costs, instead of trying to reduce producer prices. Public authorities should engage stakeholders of the agri-food supply chain in relationships that will enable food firms to deliver on their quality and price demands.Originality/valuePrimary production and collaborations of it with food firms have not been studied in regards to what extent they relate to food firms' export performance.

Purpose of the paper : This study examines whether there is a balance between the impact of market factors and policy factors that accelerate certification, such that a divergence between the supply and demand of certified food is avoided. Methodology : A value co-creation framework and a discrete choice model are developed to analyze the acceleration of certification. The model is empirically investigated with quantitative data, collected from 231 Greek certified farm businesses. Findings : Five market and policy factors accelerate certification. Policy factors outperform market factors, but because the most crucial factor is control exertion by authorities, this is not expected to unbalance the development of the certified food subsector. The role of private standards in shifting from public to private food-sector governance is also confirmed. Research limitations : The model estimation is based on aggregated data in the sense that five quality schemes are included; thus, some information may have been overlooked. Implications : The theoretical framework can be used in future empirical analyses, especially when the certification decisions of small and medium-sized enterprises are examined. Public authorities should be cautious about altering the structure of incentives for farm businesses; certifiers should make certification more attractive to farm businesses; marketers should encourage farmers to accelerate certifications; and farm businesses and their organizations should focus on certification efficiency. Originality of the paper : The paper goes beyond issues considered in previous studies by focusing on the balance between market- and policy-related factors that accelerate certification, and developing a theoretical framework.

This chapter portrays the information flow for sustainability issues along the globalized food supply chain and explores the eco-certification decisions of farm businesses, viewing them as the first upstream chain participant. This examination is based on the literature to connect eco-certification with transparency and to portray traceability schemes for sustainability issues in food supply chains, followed by information technology-based systems and applications supporting traceability. The third section presents the eco-certification decisions at the supply chain level in four subsections. It first builds a theoretical framework regarding the downstream firms' sustainability-related decisions by offering conceptual definitions. Next the farm business decision logic is given, followed by the discrete choice model. The specialization of the model is presented in the third subsection, followed by the results, discussions, and implications for practitioners. Some conclusions and implications for future research are offered in the last section.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore farmers’ intention to stay under a quality certification scheme, and the factors that impact this intention. Design/methodology/approach – Combining the agricultural household approach with the value concept, the paper analyses farmers’ intention using field research data. The improvements farmers observe after certification are viewed as utilities the farm household derives, which have an impact on farmers’ intention. These improvements are located as “enablers” and “results” in the EFQM Excellence Model to better explain the findings. Findings – Farmers’ intention tends to be positive, and impacted by five improvements. These are located in both the enablers and results fields, implying that farmers’ intention is holistically shaped. Furthermore, eight characteristics of the farm and farm household, and four sources of information, shift farmers’ intention. Research limitations/implications – Since farmers’ intention is examined independently of the quality standards that each one implements, future research should account for the impact of these differences. It should also examine the impact of various policy measures on farmers’ intention. Since analysis assumes a linear relationship, future research should introduce a more complex model, possibly in structural form. Practical implications – Public authorities should make the maintenance of quality certification more attractive, especially for segments without strong intention. Certifiers should adjust their audit services to enhance value; and players in the food supply chain should consider the drivers of farmers’ intention when building marketing strategies. Originality/value – To the authors’ knowledge, there are no extant studies exploring farmers’ intention to maintain certification. In addition, the paper proposes a novel theoretical framework, which should also be used in cases where quality-related changes in enterprises impact the income and quality of life of the enterprise owners, for instance in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The present paper proposes a framework for examining whether a food production enterprise, attempting to build an ecocertification strategy, connects the creation of environmental value with the creation of economic value, balancing environmental sustainability with economic sustainability. More specifically, the paper combines demand theory with a discreet choice consumers’ model in an embryonic ecocertified food market, to examine whether economic value is created and to identify the determinants of this value creation. An empirical investigation of the model using consumer data indicates that a variety of factors, such as consumer’s age and profession, family’s income and purchasing strategy, product quality association in consumers’ mind and the retailing outlet, play an important role in shaping the respondents’ intention to pay for the ecofriendliness of products. The proposed framework can help enterprise management to balance the consumers’ and enterprise owners’ claims in cases where certification schemes or standards exist that enable enterprises to communicate social responsibility to their customers.

After a literature review on the economics of quality, we combine the value creation logic with the hedonic price function to analyze dimensions of design quality in enterprises. Viewing the quality-based organization as a collection of processes generating quality attributes and characteristics that constitute a solution for customers, we estimate market value as a measure of process economic performance based on objectively measured real economic data. The model can help to identify the relationship between design quality and market evaluations and to manage the quality of product and service at supply chain level.

The implementation of quality assurance systems in the global food market strengthens companies’ position and improves their competitiveness. After considering existing research findings regarding the implementation of quality assurance systems in enterprises in various economic sectors (food, non-food, manufacturing, and services), this paper examines the benefits or advantages, as well as the disadvantages or barriers, that may face small food enterprises implementing such systems. In this way, it is possible to identify the main internal and external factors which may affect the decision of a small food enterprise to adopt a quality assurance system. Several managerial, marketing, and policy implications are proposed related to the improvement of the business environment for adoption of quality assurance systems by small food enterprises.

The aim of this paper is to study consumers' buying behaviours towards certified eco-friendly food and to estimate their willingness to buy this food. It also examines the role of the retailer to replace the certification and to add value by analysing the consumer's 'willingness to switch store' in order to purchase a certified product. Results indicate that consumers' intentions to purchase eco-certified food depend on the level of awareness about production conditions, the eco-mark experience and credence attribute associations, occupation and household income. Therefore, the eco-mark and the most preferred retailer could add value for customers. A methodological insight is that when the consumer's decisions for eco-friendly products are analysed, the distinction of eco-mark representations in three different attribute associations improves the explaining capacity of the consumer's decision model.

Building a competitive advantage, which is based on differentiation, is more attractive to firms when many product characteristics are not perceptible prior to a purchase, as in the case of most food products. The hedonic price analysis is used in this paper to investigate the influence of food differentiation on consumer prices and to identify the implicit prices of product characteristics related to the milk and cheese market in Greece. Its results will help those involved in the milk and cheese industry to adopt the appropriate product development and product differentiation strategies on a national and international scale. The analysis results reveal that milk retail prices are influenced by fat content, production and processing conditions, product enrichment, and the size, type or form of packaging. Cheese prices are influenced by the origin of the milk (domestic, sheep or goat), packaging size and the protected designation of origin element.

This study examines whether the implementation of a quality management system (QMS) and the choice of a certain quality assurance scheme (QAS) were decided as responses by fruit and vegetable producers to market conditions, separating certification decisions into two components. A survey study is conducted and two discrete choice models are estimated: ordered logit for the implementation of QMS and binary probit for the choice of QAS. It is found that the buyers’ demand for certification and the efforts of farmers to differentiate their products from others in an area that may present local quality problems lead farm businesses to accelerate QMS implementation. Regarding the choice of a private QAS, it is a market-driven decision. The conclusion is that certifications are characterised by a market-driven approach and the increased interest in certified products can lead to the diffusion of certification. Because the absence of information provision and the controls exerted by public authorities have an impact on QMS implementation, the diffusion of certification depends also on public policy measures, indicating the crucial role of a public policy mix properly designed to promote certification.