International Marketing and International Trade of Quality Food Products

The Workshop on International Marketing and International Trade of Quality Food Products held at the Faculty of Agriculture in Bologna on March 8-10, 2007 was endorsed by the European Association of Agricultural Economists (EAAE) as its 105th seminar. It was organised by the Department of Agricultural Economics and Engineering in the framework of the activities foreseen by the BEAN-QUORUM project (Building a Euro-Asian Network for Quality,Organic, and Unique food Marketing - TH/Asia-Link/006) funded by the European Union's Asia-Link Programme . The Asia-Link Programme is a programme dedicated to the promotion of regional and multilateral networking between higher education institutions in European Union Member States and South Asia, South-East Asia and China.The BEAN-QUORUM consortium is composed by 5 Asian and European Universities, aiming at setting up long-term relationships and enlarging the initial network to other Higher Education Institutions, companies, governemental bodies, or any other subjects in the food industry who are interested in the topic of marketing for quality food. The Seminar was held in concurrence with the 3rd meeting of the consortium. The main motivation for this initiative was the increasing relevance for agricultural and food products of the proposed keywords "Marketing", "International Trade" and "Quality" in the scientific debate among agricultural economists. Marketing and quality are intimately linked and the specifity of the food industry has highlighted the need to develop a conceptual approach that could be more consistent with the peculiarities of both the organization of the food sector and the behaviour of food product consumers. In this respect, many controversial issues may be raised by the three keywords. The word "Marketing" may be interpreted in many ways, by which the specificity of agricultural and food marketing may be more or less emphasized. Another controversial word is certainly "quality". It is apparent that overall improvement of the quality of agri-food products is a strategic task for agriculture and rural economic development and has become a policy priority. Presently, the key words when talking about agriculture and food products are quality and safety. These two terms are often used together, even if some consider safety to be part of the quality concept. It may be argued that safety is not linked with marketing, but this may be true only at a national level, while on an international level the existence of different safety standards may play a role both in marketing and in international trade issues. In this respect, Europe has drastically reformed its Agriculture Policy also with the aim of guaranteeing quality and sustainability of production, and safety for consumers. This topic is also important outside of the European borders and beyond the better developed economic areas. Under the pressure of increasing international and EU demand for safe, highquality and environmentally-friendly food products, and a domestic push for safer food, developing countries also are starting to open the doors to new concepts such as EU organic and geographical indication foods. The marketing of quality food products generates important opportunities for increasing relationships among Europe and the other countries, both on the export and import side. These opportunities – along with the related exploitation of the opportunities created by growing world trade flows and growing markets for organic and quality food – have increased the need of specific competencies and skills in the marketing and trading of food products having specific features. A great debate is also currently going on regarding geographically indicated foods, together with the push towards the globalization of markets. Interesting discussions regard the ability of these marketing tools to increase the welfare of consumers, as well as to induce local development and be...