Rosa Misso

Alimentazione, salute e benessere del consumatore: da determinanti di scelta ad opportunità di mercato

The main aim of this paper is to analyse how time has modified the concept of food safety risk for consumers, determining, both, new regulatory developments, particularly related to information and consumer protection, and new market opportunities that facilitate the introduction of innovative products, including functional foods. Subsequently the work provides a brief review of the literature on consumers attitudes towards functional foods as a preamble to the empirical part of the study, where the results of a direct survey are presented in order to offer some indications to developers and marketers as well as government bodies that are interested in designing consumer communication strategies and effective health programs. The final section concludes with a discussion of the implications of the results and suggests some future research avenues.

Regional Sustainability: National Forest Parks in Greece

Regional sustainability promotes an integrated approach to planning and development in regional communities. European Union legislative acts bring together all levels of government to achieve a holistic approach to sustainability using Information and Communication Technologies tools for better delivery of services. Today, there has been observed an increasing interest in applying e-government to different business sectors such as the environmental sector. Sustainable management of National Forest Parks relies on a complete understanding of the goods and services, which are provided to the society. This paper aims to study e-government websites concerning the 10 Greek National Forest Parks and analyse the websites as to their qualitative and quantitative features. Then, the electronic services model adoption of the websites is assessed. The e-government websites are classified in electronic services adoption stages starting from a simple presence of the government agency in the Internet to the total electronic services integration through multiple ICT tools and applications provision according to content features accomplished by the websites. The findings can be helpful for managers, policy makers, web designers, environmentalists and government agencies.

Functional foods: regulatory framework and new market opportunities

Many researches in literature highlight how today the consumer is more concerned about self-care and personal wellbeing and is seemingly demanding more information on how to achieve better health through diet. Specifically, health aspects of food are prominent for Italian consumers. Therefore, the development and marketing of a growing spectrum of products called functional is a major trend in today’s national food industry. Based on these considerations the current paper carried out an overview of the development projections and market potentials of functional foods in the international, European and national scale, together with a critical analysis of the state of legislation in the European Union. Subsequently the results of a survey, conducted on a random sample of 340 Italian consumers, are presented in order to provide some indications to developers and marketers as well as government bodies that are interested in designing consumer communication strategies and effective health programs.