Abstract
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to evaluate the market potential of food obtained from olive by-products. The marketing of such by-products (e.g. olive leaves and pulp) is a challenging opportunity for the sustainable development of the sector. Yet, consumer demand is still poorly understood. The paper contributes to filling the knowledge gap with an empirical survey of a sample of Italian consumers.Design/methodology/approachThe authors provide an assessment of consumers’ willingness to accept (WTA) food from olive by-products. The authors collected structured questionnaire from a sample of 289 Italian consumers. The authors asked to consumers their willingness to try a variety of food products containing olive by-products, as a proxy for their WTA the products. In order to investigate the drivers of the average WTA, the authors used the information in the questionnaire to build four constructs of interest: technophobia, neophobia, perception of benefits and awareness about sustainable consumption. The choice of the constructs and the variables was driven by the existing literature.FindingsThe paper shows how the WTA food with olive by-products is a general attitude of the consumer, rather than product-specific choice. The results suggest that consumers perceive the use of olive by-products as a new technology for preparing well-known food products. The authors did not find statistical evidence of the wariness of olive by-products as new food products. Technophobia is the most important factor hampering the marketing of olive by-products.Originality/valueThe paper is a first attempt of exploring the topic of WTA food with olive by-products.
Highlights
Cooperatives, which could be defined as “[. . .] people-centred enterprises owned, controlled and run by and for their members to realize their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations” (International Cooperative Alliance – ICA, www.ica.coop), play a crucial role in the economy at the international scale
This research contributes to the literature on cooperative performance in several ways: First, we consider the different business goals of cooperatives relative to those of investor-owned firms (IOFs), allowing the construction of a more accurate measure of performance; second, we develop an empirical analysis focussed on the Italian wine industry, in which cooperatives play a crucial role in wine production and exports
Research design: dependent and independent variables To investigate whether cooperatives perform better than IOFs, we assumed that these two types of companies differ in their objectives and ownership structures; in IOFs, ownership is assigned to risk capital holders who act as residual claimants, while in cooperatives, ownership is assigned to the same subjects for whose interest the business is assigned, where these subjects are involved as customers or workers or as suppliers of raw materials (Chaddad and Cook, 2004)
Summary
Cooperatives, which could be defined as “[. . .] people-centred enterprises owned, controlled and run by and for their members to realize their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations” (International Cooperative Alliance – ICA, www.ica.coop), play a crucial role in the economy at the international scale. Profit maximization is not their objective, as is the case for IOFs, as they instead pursue the maximization of members’ value by offering products and services at affordable prices or, as for cooperatives in the agricultural sector, they can buy raw materials from their members paying higher than market prices (Hart and Moore, 1996) From these considerations, to avoid generating biased results, in this study, we deviate from the usual literature on cooperative performance, which focusses predominantly on classical measures of financial performance, by adopting an adjusted measure based on earnings before interests, taxes, depreciations and amortizations (EBITDA) gross the cost of raw materials. We discuss the implications of the findings and our consequent conclusions
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