Abstract
The Italian market of processed tomatoes (whole peeled and unpeeled tomatoes, chopped tomato pulp, tomato purée, and concentrated tomato paste) rose, thanks to the Italian tradition of using such products in many recipes of cuisine, until early 2000; since then, it has declined to date. Moreover, such products are traditionally considered low-price products, and their market is characterized by intense price competition. Thus, recently, producers have started to differentiate their products as a way to achieve higher margins, and escape from competition in price. By using the sales data of Italian processed tomatoes sold in several retail stores and a hedonic price model, we estimated the implicit prices associated with several attributes that are currently available in processed tomato products on the market. We find that a protected designation of origin, organic certification, and flavoring, as well as the indication of tomato variety, are the most valuable features of processed tomato products sold in the Italian market. This implies that product differentiation strategies that could be suggested to producers as the most effective are those aimed at enhancing the territorial link of the product, the environmental sustainability of the production process, and organoleptic product features, as well as its convenience.
Highlights
Is the third largest producing country of processed tomatoes in the world, with a production of 5.16 million tons in 2020, after the U.S.A. (10.14 million tons), and China (5.8 million tons) [1,2]
We focused on the Italian market for two reasons: first, processed tomato sales account for more than half of total tomatoes sold in Italy due to the historical habit of Italian consumers of using processed tomato in many traditional recipes; second, the Italian tomato industry is highly concentrated; leading companies may have the technical knowhow and financial resources to invest in product differentiation strategies
The first part involved the selection of hypermarkets, supermarkets, minimarkets, and discounters located in the Apulia and Piedmont regions, from which we retrieved information on the characteristics of processed tomato products sold at the retail level
Summary
Is the third largest producing country of processed tomatoes in the world, with a production of 5.16 million tons in 2020, after the U.S.A. (10.14 million tons), and China (5.8 million tons) [1,2]. Is the third largest producing country of processed tomatoes in the world, with a production of 5.16 million tons in 2020, after the U.S.A. Italian production of processed tomato products accounts for approximately 13.6% of global production, and 49% of European production, with a market size of approximately EUR 3.1 billion [3]. Italian tomato product processing is geographically concentrated in the Emilia-Romagna and Apulia regions, which account for 35% and 32% of national production, respectively [4]. 75% of tomatoes produced worldwide are earmarked for fresh consumption, while the remaining 25% are processed. This ratio largely varies across regions and geographical eating habits. In Italy, for instance, processed tomato is one of the main ingredients in national culinary traditions, widely used for pasta and pizza preparation [5]
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