“CREAZIONE E CONDIVISIONE DI CONOSCENZA DI MARKETING SONO TRA I VALORI DI FONDO CHE ORIENTANO L’IMPEGNO DELLA FACULTY MUMM NELLE ATTIVITA’ DI RICERCA E DIDATTICA”
Alberto Mattiacci
Typical products marketing: tales from the Italian food and beverages industry
British Food Journal, volume 106, nr. 10/11, 2004
This special issue of the British Food Journal includes the contributions of a group of management researchers working in different Italian Universities. Despite the geographical scatter of their head offices, they share a deep scientific interest in a particular category of food productions, whose increasing economic importance is under everybody’s eyes: the typical products.
What is a typical food product? Which are the interesting cues about it? What does it express in terms of commercial values? Which are the related significant questions in terms of management? These are few questions the articles of this issue try to answer.
The final result of this work shows a significant outline of the Italian typical productions representative of geographical realities very different between each other.
Furthermore, the volume includes two contributions that we could define “transversal” compared to the others. The analysis of the recent evolution of the typical foods Italian market has shown that third actors – outside the production system – had played a non-marginal role in spurring the development of sensitivities toward the consumption of these products – and of food in general – that is:
a) the cultural association, represented by the case of Slow Food, that from a strictly cultural subject has changed into an extraordinary business propeller in few years;
b) the electronic commerce that finds in Esperya.com one of the few successful cases of e-commerce in Italy. It is also representative of a business model able to de-contextualize the character of tipicality extending it from the mere product to related (restoration) and non-related business areas (eno-gastronomic tourism).
Essentially, the scenario of the typical foods traced by the articles of this issue seems to be very rich and complex:
- the business is in between of local striking root (production) and worldwide extent (consumption);
- it can alternatively occupy market niches (e.g. Aceto Balsamico) as well as configuring mass markets (e.g. Pandoro di Verona);
- it creates new consumption models (e.g. Buffalo Mozzarella), or re-vitalize new ones, once destined to decline (e.g. wine);
- it characterizes geographical areas turning them into real production districts (e.g. Capua, near Neaples, for Buffalo Mozzarella), as well as it defines the country image (e.g. pasta);
- in the end, it provides the endurance of small and minor enterprises as well as of diversification areas of major entrepreneurial realities.