The concept of products having designated country of origin was investigated. It was established that a coherent approach can be developed by systematic organisation and structuring of the available information. A working definition was developed for identification of successful practices in...

Since over the last twenty years the reduction of trade barriers, the increasing liberalisation, the advancement in ICT have determined a growth in the horizontal and vertical competition among firms in the chain. Therefore, today more than ever they are pressured to develop appropriate...

The purpose of the paper is to explore how the perceived relationship quality is related to the innovation capacity in chains of the traditional food sector. Based on suggestions from theory and previous studies, empirical evidence is drawn from a survey of 90 traditional food chains including...

In the EU market small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) represent the greater part of the food industry, specially with regard to traditional food products (TFPs). However, the growth of competition, connected mainly to globalisation, is making it very difficult for SMEs to survive. On the...

This paper reports on food chain transparency. The research specifically aims to investigate best practices. Therefore, inductive research was conducted, starting with the identification of best practices. Further, underlying patterns were investigated to derive hypotheses and to develop a...

Organizations no longer compete as independent entities, but as chains (Christopher 1998; Cox 1999; Lambert and Cooper 2000), and these organizations more and more realize the performance potential of chains (Pearson and Samali 2005; Gellynck, Vermeire and Viaene 2006). Being part of a well‐performing...

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are fighting for survival due to globalization, growing competition with big retailers, and strategies adopted by large industrial companies. Difficulties in pricing are also revealed in the literature. Therefore, appropriate activity is needed to be...

In today business world where knowledge and resources are increasingly spread among organizations, enterprises often develop a wide variety of relationships with other organizations in order to access new technologies, know-how and resources. Increasingly, the use of external resources for...

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the competitive performance of different European countries at sector level in the intra-EU market from 1995 to 2011, comparing food industry and agricultural sector. In particular, we aim to assess the effect of the EU enlargement (first period) and the...