Volume 17, Issue 1 -

We evaluate the impact of different types of information on participants' willingness-to-pay (WTP) and quantity choices for both beef and soy burger meat. To this end, we conducted a lab experiment to elicit WTP with multiple-price lists and chosen quantities of two products in a basket. Participants were provided with explanatory messages regarding the impact of beef and soy on health and environment before successive rounds of WTP determinations and quantity choices. Results show a weak impact of successive rounds of messages on WTP for both beef and soy, while leading to higher relative variations for chosen quantities. These relative changes in both WTP and quantities are then combined for computing the value of information. Results show a relatively low value of information compared to the expenditure for beef. In the last section of the paper we evaluate the effect of the introduction of a beef burger labeled “Fed without GMO” on WTP and quantity choices. Results underline a weak impact of “Fed without GMO” label on changing participants' preferences.

Organic and healthy products are becoming more prevalent in markets worldwide, but limited research investigates how consumers choose among these products. This article considers relationships among price, product quality, assortment, and staff service that might affect consumer product choices, as well as a moderating role of macroeconomic conditions. The most important drivers of a choice of organic over healthy products are assortment and service. This study also reveals a distinction between organic and healthy products resulting from the interaction of marketing variables with macroeconomic contexts, such that crisis periods can prompt the cannibalization of healthy products by organic products.

Over the last couple of years, the production amount of feed and the market concentration of the feed industry vastly increased in North-Western Germany. This development might lead to asymmetric price transmission of feed between regions in Germany because feed markets in other regions grow slower and therefore decline in relative volume and importance. To analyze this development, the objective of the study was to quantify price relationships of pig, hens and calves feed prices between Western Lower Saxony, Eastern Lower Saxony and Westphalia. Assuming Western Lower Saxony as the central market and using monthly price observation from 2007 until 2017, the results show that the feed prices were co-integrated across regions and type of feed. The results show a tendency of asymmetric price transmission for pig feed between Western Lower Saxony and Eastern Lower Saxony but this was not statistically significant at the 5 % level. Furthermore, we also tested the influence of the feed scandals dioxin in pig feed and mold in imported maize from Serbia, but we could not estimate a pattern of price adjustments between regions according to the feed scandals. Summarizing the results, we came to the conclusion that feed prices might be perfectly transmitted across regions and independently from feed scandals and type of feed.

The demand for two composite goods, food away from home (FAFH) and prepared food (PF), are trending upward in Japan as Japanese society ages. This paper estimates the demand function of FAFH and PF. We adopt the almost ideal demand system and predict the effect on future demand from age and cohort changes. We find that the age effect decreases both while the cohort effect increases the share of FAFH but decreases that of PF. Over time, the demand for FAFH gradually decreases but remains stable. The demand for PF has been decreasing as of 2010 and more quickly than for FAFH. The reason is that both the age effect and the dynamic population trend decrease the demand for both goods, while the cohort effect slows the decrease in demand for FAFH but accelerates that for PF.

The aim of this paper is to explore Crowdfunding as a new form of Open Innovation for SMEs and family business in the Agri-Food sector which usually do not have the same skills and tools to operate with conventional own Crowdsourcing methods. The study first has analyzed the principal literature and data available on Crowdfunding and the Food industry in order to describe the state of the art in this subject. Afterwards the focus of the paper goes to the analysis of the Italian case. The study used a deep qualitative approach because of an important lack of data and information on this subject. Nine depth interviews to key informants of the sector have been carried out investigating the market players, the normative regulations, the businesses models and the evolution of Crowdfunding for the Agri-Food industry in Italy. The research finds that Crowdfunding for Agri-Food industry can be important for both its profitability and the development of the sector, but that nowadays the Italian market is still in its primordial phase. Crowdfunding is very suitable for SMEs business which represents the vast majority of the Agri-Food Italian market and the use of this instrument could be beneficial for it.

Nowadays, efficient supply chain network design is a major issue, which becomes a greater challenge with the need to consider environmental and social concerns in decisions, besides economic issues. This paper develops a supply chain planning model based on a multi-objective framework that considers economic, social and environmental issues. The model is applied to the tilapia pisciculture supply chain in Brazil. A pay-off matrix is derived and an approximation of the Pareto frontier is built using the augmented ε-constraint method. Several non-dominated solutions are generated and analyzed in order to propose the preferable scenarios of supply chain network design.