Food as attraction: connections between a hotel and suppliers of specialty food

<scp>IFST</scp> vision for a <scp>UK</scp>‐wide national food strategy

Economic Vulnerabilities and Livelihoods: Impact of <scp>COVID</scp>‐19 in Fiji and Vanuatu

Energy from food waste

Despite strong market interest in speciality foods, producers find market access and distribution challenging. This exploratory research includes a literature review and five case studies of supply chains relating to shellfish, cheese, meat, potato and miscellaneous speciality foods in the mid-Norway region. The study identifies key supply chain configuration parameters from the extant literature, and these are used to analyse the cases. The study makes three main contributions to the literature: an analytical framework for analysing the supply chain characteristics of speciality foods; important supply chain factors for accessing the conventional food supply chain; and five propositions for improving market access. We argue that the speciality foods supply chain should be configured according to these propositions to ensure responsiveness to customer needs and to strengthen market access.

Business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce is an innovative use of information and communication technologies and refers to the exchange of goods and related information between companies supported by Internet-based tools such as electronic marketplaces (also called electronic trade platforms) or online shops. It provides opportunities for cost-efficiency in supply chain management processes and access to new markets. With regard to the food sector with its chain levels input – agriculture – industry – retail – consumer, B2B e-commerce would take place in the exchange of food products between all levels except retail to consumer (business-to-consumer e-commerce). It is evident and widely known that B2B e-commerce brings key advantages and potentials for European consumers and the European food sector: The affordability of high quality, traceable food for European consumers is supported as the innovation potentials from e-commerce technologies for cost-efficient processes along the food chain. The healthy choice of quality food will become the easy and affordable choice for European consumers. The competitiveness of the European food sector with the majority of SMEs increases as B2B e-commerce technologies support cost-efficient transaction processes in food supply chains. In recent years, the availability of sophisticated B2B e-commerce technology has improved tremendously. The “European e-Business Market Watch” initiative from the Directorate-General Enterprise and Industry from the European Commission has shown that only large multinationals exploit the potentials of B2B e-commerce in the food sector for their supply chain management with their business partners. SMEs however, which create the majority of turn over in the European food sector and therefore create jobs and welfare in Europe, are reluctant to take up existing B2B e-commerce technologies into their food supply of selling. The crucial barrier to adoption is that trust between companies is not mediated appropriately by existing e-commerce technology. Currently, the barrier for food sector SMEs towards B2B e-commerce come from the difficulty to examine the quality and safety of food products. This refers to all kinds of transactions in the food sector, whether supported by e-commerce or not. However, when it comes to e-commerce, the difficulty of physical product examination plays a much larger role as physical product inspection is not possible; the (perceived) risk of performing a transaction via e-commerce. This includes concerns regarding secure transfer of data, or the possibly unknown transaction partner. Elements for the generation of trust between companies in the food chain and therefore of trustworthy B2B e-commerce environments for the food sector include guaranties regarding food quality, multimedia food product presentations to signal their quality, secure e-commerce technology infrastructures, third-party quality signs to be provided. As trust is highly subjective and depends on culture, food chains in different European countries with a different cultural background require different combinations of trust generating elements regarding the quality and safety of food. Different food chain scenarios with their transaction processes and risks regarding food quality and food safety and related trust elements need to be analysed and differences in trust in different European food chains need to be considered. It is the objective of this paper to identify food chains with trans-European cross-border exchange of food products (e.g., fresh vegetables, fresh fruits, meat, grain) and international food chains from Brazil and the US to Europe and to analyse the these food chains with their transaction processes along the food chain and typical risks regarding food quality and food safety. This WP mainly builds on expert interviews with food chain business leaders and food chain business associations from the advisory board. It is therefore an essential part of the communication with the stakeholders of the project’ results and will create awareness and sensibility towards the topic. It includes the analysis of the transaction process phases and the analysis of particular risks involved in the food product distribution chains, respectively. Risks regarding food quality and food safety provide hints for the necessity of B2B trust elements to compensate the risks. The analysis focuses on trans-European cross-border and international food chains with their chain levels (e.g. production to wholesale trade, wholesale trade to industry, or wholesale trade to retail). In particular, it regards the food product groups meat, grain, olive oil, fresh vegetables, and fresh fruits and the particular risks regarding food quality and safety along the chains.

Digitalising food manufacturing

Enabling digitisation to reduce risk in the food system

This paper details our effort in determining how technological advancement facilitates business relationship and ameliorates the competitive advantage of supply network. Using business network management literature, current knowledge employs Activity-Resource-Actor Model (ARAM) to recap the drivers, opportunities, and challenges of smart technologies in a supply network. The following discussions reveal that in presence of technological advancement, precise knowledge sharing, stronger social co-creation, smart management, and robust legal system, business relationship and supplier collaboration can benefit from a sustainable, modern, adaptive, robust, and technology-oriented activity links, resource ties, and actor bonds, per se, smart supply network. The paper confirms that digital-linked activities empower businesses and help them gain more from interdependencies benefits. Digital-linked resources enhance heterogeneity advantage, while digital-bonded actors are obtained from transcendence. The benefits derived from digitizing activity links, resource ties, and an actor bond is reliant upon a company’s own activity structure, interdependencies, and connectedness. However, the challenges of direct/indirect relationship costs prevent companies benefiting from a smart supply network.

PurposeThis paper explores the most recent contributions to interpreting customer-driven supply chains (CDSCs) under the IMP lens, focusing on the main characteristics that emerged from a review of the relevant literature. The purpose of this paper is to offer a holistic interpretative framework of major topics covered by the CDSC literature, highlighting both some shared issues and emerging elements using the IMP conceptual framework’s ARA (actor bonds, activity links and resource ties) model.Design/methodology/approachThe paper reviewed the literature by searching selected journals using a combination of specific keywords in order to find the most recent contributions on the CDSC theme. The presented analysis allowed an interpretation of the findings through a conceptual framework.FindingsThe findings suggest that the ARA model could be a useful method through which to structure an interpretation of the most recent contributions, in both IMP and the general literature, on the discipline. In particular, three streams of research were identified: the customer closeness strategy, relational strategy, and intra-organizational strategy.Research limitations/implicationsThese clusters can be deeply analyzed using the major knowledge on CDSC dynamics. By studying these issues in an integrated way, the implications in terms of competition, generalization of results, constraints, problems, and difficulties of the customer-driven approach could be enhanced. Limitations are the restricted period of time and the absence of empirical research.Practical implicationsEach identified cluster presents the tools that have to be improved in order to implement the customer-driven orientation, which increases the performance and brings an added value for the same supply chain. For this reason, an emerging need is to develop studies on the empirical side that consider the implications in terms of an integrated framework among the three issues.Originality/valueThe paper increases the understanding of CDSCs by using conceptual and interpretative tools developed by the IMP literature. The ARA model allows the creation of a conceptual framework that clarifies, in a holistic way, the most important characteristics that have to be developed in order to improve the CDSC perspective. Recommendations and a research agenda for the implementation of the customer-driven view are derived.

The rise and spread of Covid-19 pandemic affected all parts of the human society by creating massive socio-economic panic across all the sectors including agriculture, tourism, commerce, shipping, manufacturing and tertiary sectors across the world. The agricultural and food sector were considered as the most crucial part of the developing economics across the globe, which was completely exposed during the Covid-19 pandemic. It has an undesirable and prominent influence on agriculture and allied sectors in India. The pandemic lockdown has resulted in the agrarian crisis across the nation by influencing and disrupting the food demand, food supply and value chain of various agricultural goods and commodities. In the country like India where majority of the population, approximately 140 million, depends directly or indirectly on agriculture and food sectors as the primary source of their income the impact due to the Covid-19 pandemic created an imbalance and affected the economy of the nation. Containing an analysis and detailed review based on articles, scientific reports, publications, organizational statements, and press releases, this review article addresses an inclusive assessment and highlights the effects of Covid-19 pandemic on agriculture and food systems. An effort has been made to understand its impact on food supply, food demand, food prices, food security and national economy. The need of the hour is to promote effective solutions in order to control critical factors such as food production, food supply, food demand, price hikes, food security and supply chain resilience. Since the urbanization and population will have tremendous growth in the coming decades, epidemics may be more frequent and we need to ensure contingency plans and mitigation strategies, especially for agricultural and food systems.

Chapter 2 - Biosensor and nanotechnology: Past, present, and future in food research

Cutting edge technologies to end food waste

PurposeThis paper aims to explore the role and meaning of openness for the purpose of enhancing the understanding of collaborative innovation from an industrial network perspective.Design/methodology/approachThe theoretical framework is based on the Industrial Network Approach, and the concepts of activity links, resource ties and actor bonds are used as a starting point for capturing the content and dynamics of the interaction. The empirical part consists of five case studies: two historical and three contemporary cases dealing with collaborative innovation projects. The cases are analyzed with regard to openness in business relationships and their connections in the network.FindingsThe main contribution is a conceptualization of openness in business relationships and relationship connections. The paper describes various forms and contents of openness – and closeness. It is postulated that the concept of openness can be used as an analytical tool for digging deeper into relationship and network-related issues of relevance to firms’ behavior in the context of collaborative innovation. Openness, as it is defined in this paper, is also put forward as an explanation of why (or why not) collaborative innovation projects become successful.Originality/valueThe conceptualization of openness differs from openness as it is commonly described in the open innovation literature. There, openness is the opposite of closeness, that is, a pattern where the innovation activities take place internally within the company. In this paper, openness, instead, has to do with how firms interact with other network actors in the context of collaborative innovation.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of internationalization patterns among speciality food small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), investigating dimensions that may have a bearing on such patterns, using a series of case studies. In particular the investigation seeks to gain new insights about differences among companies in their internationalization patterns. These differences are examined in a framework which tries to relate three company‐level dimensions (market, technology and space) to internationalization patterns. The three dimensions are derived from the constructs developed by Storper and Salais, and Straete.Design/methodology/approachTwo research questions (RQs) are formulated: Is there a relationship between the internationalization pace of speciality food SMEs and their technology, market, and space dimensions? Is there a relationship between the internationalization modes of speciality food SMEs and their technology, market, and space dimensions? A qualitative approach was adopted and cases from a broad dataset were used. The present research is an explorative research: it is intended to provide insights from which hypotheses might be developed.FindingsThis paper provides an empirical and conceptual contribution to the food internationalization debate. On the empirical side, it provides new evidence on speciality food internationalization, showing a rather diversified set of internationalization patterns, both in terms of pace and modes. On the conceptual side, it shows that the three dimensions of technology, market and space may help to enrich the comprehension of internationalization phenomena. While data collected seem not to provide insights from which hypotheses might be developed concerning RQ1, they seem on the contrary to provide useful insights concerning RQ2.Research limitations/implicationsLimitations of the research generally relate to the use of a small sample. Future research should strive to obtain larger samples, develop a set of relevant finer‐grained hypotheses and test those using appropriate statistical techniquesPractical implicationsIdentifying the impact that the three dimensions might have on internationalization patterns and vice versa may help to focus on these specific elements when companies make their internationalization decisions. On the same line, public policy agencies could benefit from these first results for better clustering companies targeting their internationalization supporting initiatives.Originality/valueThe findings add to the limited body of knowledge on the key influences on internationalization patterns within the food sector.

PurposeThis paper aims to propose a new theoretical model based on the AAR framework (actor bonds, activity links and resource ties) to examine the effects of the identified buyer‐supplier relationship elements on four indicators of relative competitive advantage for the buyer firm.Design/methodology/approachThe paper bases its findings on data gathered through a survey of 216 key informants within the Australian manufacturing sector. AMOS v. 18 is used to perform confirmatory factor analysis and to estimate a structural model of the proposed hypotheses.FindingsThe paper finds support for the notion that actor bonds between the firm and its largest supplier provide a source of competitive advantage that result in higher relative customer satisfaction, innovation, market efficiency and market effectiveness for the buyer firm. The paper also supports the notion that a positive relationship between information sharing and asset efficiency exists.Practical implicationsThis paper demonstrates that the maintenance of positive relationships with the firm's largest supplier has implications for the firm in terms of its competitive outcomes. There is now more support for managers when building and maintaining relationships with important suppliers since there are potential implications for the firm's own competitive position.Originality/valueThe findings of this study extend previous research in the area of relationship marketing by providing a new link between relationship elements and direct competitive outcomes in a follow‐on market. It also shows that these elements have differential effects on these competitive outcomes.