Nikos Kalogeras

State of the art in benefit-risk analysis: economics and marketing-finance.

All market participants (e.g., investors, producers, consumers) accept a certain level of risk as necessary to achieve certain benefits. There are many types of risk including price, production, financial, institutional, and individual human risks. All these risks should be effectively managed in order to derive the utmost of benefits and avoid disruption and/or catastrophic economic consequences for the food industry. The identification, analysis, determination, and understanding of the benefit-risk trade-offs of market participants in the food markets may help policy makers, financial analysts and marketers to make well-informed and effective corporate investment strategies in order to deal with highly uncertain and risky situations. In this paper, we discuss the role that benefits and risks play in the formation of the decision-making process of market-participants, who are engaged in the upstream and downstream stages of the food supply chain. In addition, we review the most common approaches (expected utility model and psychometrics) for measuring benefit-risk trade-offs in the economics and marketing-finance literature, and different factors that may affect the economic behaviour in the light of benefit-risk analyses. Building on the findings of our review, we introduce a conceptual framework to study the benefit-risk behaviour of market participants. Specifically, we suggest the decoupling of benefits and risks into the separate components of utilitarian benefits, hedonic benefits, and risk attitude and risk perception, respectively. Predicting and explaining how market participants in the food industry form their overall attitude in light of benefit-risk trade-offs may be critical for policy-makers and managers who need to understand the drivers of the economic behaviour of market participants with respect to production, marketing and consumption of food products.

A service science approach for improving healthy food experiences

Purpose – Insufficient attention to the specific nature of healthy food experiences might limit the success of related innovations. The purpose of this article is to adopt a value-in-use perspective to conceptualize healthy food consumption as experiential and emotional, rather than the mere intake of nutrition, and to examine the development of healthy food communication with a service science approach. Design/methodology/approach – With a service science approach, this study proposes a virtual healthy food platform for children. The key data come from internal project documents, workshops with children and other stakeholders (e.g. parents, teachers), and interviews with project team members. Findings – The simultaneity of functional and hedonic benefits, implications for multiple stakeholders, social norms, and need for expertise characterize healthy food experiences. The proposed framework accounts for enablers, principles, outcomes, and challenges affecting the development of communication integral to healthy food experiences, using project data and tools as illustrations. Research limitations/implications – This study contributes to growing literature on service science by introducing key principles and contingency factors that influence the success of experience-centric service innovations. Quantitative research should validate the established framework and investigate the elements’ relative usefulness for developing healthy food communication. Practical implications – The service science approach involves multiple stakeholders, empathic data collection, and visual tools to develop an entertaining platform to help children learn about healthy food. Originality/value – This research conceptualizes and validates healthy food experiences as value-in-use offerings. The proposed service science approach accounts for the interactions among stakeholders, the holistic nature, and specificities of a real-life decision context for improving healthy food experiences.

Introduction to the Special Issue on recent Trens in the Food Industry and Food Chain

During the first decade of the millennium, considerable changes have taken place in the food industry and food chain in Western countries. The successive liberalization of agribusiness and food markets forces the food industry to respond to radical changes in the marketplace through consolidation, centralization, globalization, and large-scale operations. Understanding the changing economic behavior of market participants (e.g., producers, retailers, consumers) at different stages of the food supply chain is critical in formulating updated and well-informed corporate investment and marketing strategies and policies. Yet, it is important to emphasize that although several recent trends in the food industry and food chain seem to be similar to the trends resulting from a “moderate” revolution in the 1990s (e.g., concerns with diet and health, introduction of regulations on the uses of chemicals and additives in the food supply, the growth and market power of large, multinational food companies), the trends of the 2000s signal an “intensive” revolution in the Western food markets. However, the current revolution in the food markets, which may still be underway, changes the way that food producers and processors deliver food to consumers. That is, while consumers still demand the food items that they want, prefer, and desire of most of all, the ways food producers, processors, and retailers do business changes dramatically. Thus, the question that emerges is what are the features of this rapid and intensive revolution in the food industry and chain? Nowadays, considerable structural changes in agricultural production and the food marketing environment continue at a rapid and intensive rate. Specifically, the changing economic behavior of market participants in the agribusiness and food markets are subject to dramatic changes in food technology, information technology, the increased concerns of the various stakeholders for the conservation of the environment (e.g., natural resources), market participant attitudes for the formulation of corporate social responsibility standards and consumer safety concerns. All these changes that highlight the cornerstone features of the new revolution have attracted the interest of scholars and practitioners, since the new food production, processing, marketing, and consumption processes

Brand Preference: A Comparative Consumer Study in Selected EU Countries

This study aims to investigate the impact of different product characteristics, such as price, quality/taste, image/reputation, advertising, packaging, and colour on consumers’ purchasing behaviour. An overview of the global, as well as of the Greek and Dutch juice markets, is presented. A comparison of consumers’ preferences and attitudes is performed with respect to juices in both countries. Multivariate regression analysis is employed to explain consumer preferences for the examined brands. Specific product attributes are found to be important determinants of consumer demand. Implications for food marketing are also considered.