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Following the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, the main challenge for the agrofood sector is to innovate food production, offering sustainable, smart and safe solutions. The future of food production will be oriented more and more towards sustainable industries with high technological content to guarantee food safety and food security. It implies that a change not only in the way food is conceived, but also in the way it is produced, processed and consumed is needed. The aim of the present study is to investigate the role of innovation, sustainability, smartness and health within the agrofood industry.

A literature review was conducted using 596 academic documents written in English language and published in peer-reviewed scientific journals as well as in conference proceedings. The relevant articles were analyzed using both a bibliometric and a systematic approach.

The results confirm the role of innovation and sustainability as key drivers in the food industry. The main findings concern the benefits deriving from the adoption of digital technologies, the ever-increasing involvement of consumers in health and environmental issues and the introduction of the open innovation concept in the agrofood industry.

This study jointly considers the dimensions of innovation, sustainability, smartness and health in the agrofood sector, demonstrating how they are strongly interdependent.

The aim of this paper is to explore whether open innovation is emerging in the Italian fashion industry.

Based on available studies on innovation and open innovation, we first identified the main facets of open innovation within the industry investigated, such as the process of searching for new ideas, the involvement of external partners in the new product development process and the use of collaboration mechanisms between supply chain partners. Starting from these findings, the authors designed a semi-structured questionnaire that was used as a guideline for 15 case studies, carried out in the Italian fashion industry.

The outcomes from the case studies allow drawing some conclusions about the emergency of open innovation in the fashion industry and the related patterns.

Given its exploratory nature, this study is expected to start a debate about open innovation in the fashion industry, as well as to encourage future studies in this field.

The purpose of this research is to demonstrate the effectiveness of pictorial warning labels that leverage the risk of obesity as a deterrent against alcohol abuse. It evaluates the impact of three different kinds of warning labels that can potentially discourage alcoholic drinking: (1) a claim, in text format, that cautions consumers about the product (i.e. a responsibility warning statement); (2) a textual warning label, text-format information on the content of the product or the consequences of excessive consumption (i.e. a synthetic nutritional table); (3) a pictorial warning label, an image depicting a food product with a caloric content equivalent to that of an alcoholic beverage.

In Study 1, a 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design is used to evaluate the intention to buy different alcoholic cocktails. The stimuli comprised two cocktails that are similar in alcoholic volume, but different in their caloric content. The images of the products were presented across eight warning label conditions and shown to 480 randomly selected Italian respondents who quantified their intention to buy the product. In Study 2, a different sample of 34 Italian respondents was solicited with the same stimuli considered in Study 1, and neuropsychological measurements through Electroencephalography (EEG) were registered. A post hoc least significance difference (LSD) test is used to analyse data.

The results show that only the presence of an image representing an alcoholic beverage's caloric content causes a significant reduction in consumers' purchase intentions. This effect is due to the increase in negative emotions caused by pictorial warning labels.

The findings provide interesting insights on pictorial warning labels, which can influence the intention to purchase alcoholic beverages. They confirmed that the use of images in the warning labels has a greater impact than text, and that the risk of obesity is an effective deterrent in encouraging consumers to make healthier choices.

This study aims to increase understanding of factors influencing the international marketing (IM) strategy of products from emerging markets (EMs) to international markets.

This study conducted case studies by collecting qualitative data through semistructured interviews with respondents from four food product companies in Bangladesh.

This study finds that the firms employ local Bangladeshi people who are knowledgeable in the company culture. They strategically focus on countries where the Bangladeshi diaspora lives and initially target them, approaching natives later. They adapt and customize products to the importers’ requirements to make them visible and increase understanding between product providers and local customers. The findings show that EM firms encounter a mentality that poor countries produce poor quality products; this mindset makes the internationalization of their business difficult.

This research contributes to international product marketing of EM firms by constructing a model of a modern people-oriented marketing strategy for food products. This study contributes to literature on culture by illustrating that the cultural dimensions of collectivism and uncertainty avoidance enhance the development of networks and trust and impact marketing strategy.

This study theorizes the importance of context and an innovation-driven modern people-oriented IM strategy that adapts to customers’ preferences for food products and emphasizes the contribution of diaspora. This research reveals that Bangladeshi firms face challenges both because customers link the country and the companies to low-quality products and because governmental regulations prevent them from establishing a local presence in other countries. This study analyzes challenges EM firms face in the process of IM and the factors affecting Bangladesh in particular.

Due to unceasing declination in environment, sustainable agro-food supply chains have become a topic of concern to business, government organizations and customers. The purpose of this study is to examine a problem associated with sustainable network design in context of Indian agro-food grain supply chain.

A mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) model is suggested to apprehend the major complications related with two-echelon food grain supply chain along with sustainability aspects (carbon emissions). Genetic algorithm (GA) and quantum-based genetic algorithm (Q-GA), two meta-heuristic algorithms and LINGO 18 (traditional approach) are employed to establish the vehicle allocation and selection of orders set.

The model minimizes the total transportation cost and carbon emission tax in gathering food grains from farmers to the hubs and later to the selected demand points (warehouses). The simulated data are adopted to test and validate the suggested model. The computational experiments concede that the performance of LINGO is superior than meta-heuristic algorithms (GA and Q-GA) in terms of solution obtained, but there is trade-off with respect to computational time.

In literature, inadequate study has been perceived on defining environmental sustainable issues connected with agro-food supply chain from farmer to final distribution centers. A MINLP model has been formulated as practical scenario for central part of India that captures all the major complexities to make the system more efficient. This study is regulated to agro-food Indian industries.

The suggested network design problem is an innovative approach to design distribution systems from farmers to the hubs and later to the selected warehouses. This study considerably assists the organizations to design their distribution network more efficiently.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss and evaluate the role of hybrid forums as tools to address specific controversies related to sustainable practices in localized agro-food systems (LAFS).

In contrast with other conventional public engagement methods, such as citizen juries, consensus conferences, focus groups or deliberative processes, hybrid forums entail a more dynamic and democratic mechanism to reflect and act together, with the aim of constructing a common project around a defined challenge (Callon et al., 2001, 2009). They can offer an enriching and challenging methodological approach in the context of LAFS, especially in the discussion of controversial issues around food chain sustainability. The authors present here a new generation of hybrid forums: HF 2.0.

HF 2.0. represent both a methodological tool and a real experience of dialogic democracy, two interactive aspects which are closely interlinked and rest upon each other. The authors argue that the attractiveness of HF 2.0. is notable in at least two ways: first, they provide a solid democratic and reflective mechanism to stimulate effective dialogue and knowledge-exchange among different stakeholders; second, they contribute as an important methodological evidence-based tool, which can be used as a launching pad for shaping local action groups and community partnerships’ strategies aimed at fostering local development.

This paper attempts to provide a methodological discussion over the experimental use of HF 2.0. in the context of LAFS and assesses their effectiveness in the co-construction of knowledge. The authors explore their pragmatic validity in addressing controversies over local and sustainable seafood via empirical applications in Norway and the UK.

This paper aims to add to the theorization of the gender dynamic in rural areas by investigating the motives of women who join their family firm (or their spouse's family firm) and thereby defy the demographic trend of rural flight. The context of this study is the depopulation of rural areas with the closing of basic services and relocation of the younger population, and educated women in particular, to urban areas. Consequently, rural family businesses risk failing to find successors and suffering forced closure or relocation. The empirical site of the study is rural family firms in Sweden, a context characterized by a high level of gender equality in legislation and culture but gender-conservative business structures in rural regions.

The empirical case in this paper builds on a qualitative study of nine (9) life course narratives of women entrepreneurs in a rural region of Southern Sweden who have returned to rural areas to join their family business. The authors follow the view established by gender scholars that women are active agents in navigating their lives, and their life story narratives offer insight into the considerations that inform their choice to stay or return to rural locations. In Sweden, the setting for the study, gender equality is widely supported by legislation, policy and institutional frameworks and popular understanding of gender relations. In contrast to the gender-progressive policies of Sweden at large, women's entrepreneurship in rural regions of Sweden tends to follow traditional gender hierarchies and face similar constraints as in rural areas of other countries. The juxtaposition of these competing sets of ideals makes Sweden an important and interesting place to study and draw insights from the experiences of women entrepreneurs.

The findings reveal that women who choose to join rural family firms view them primarily in a positive light and see this choice as aligned with their need for professional flexibility and assertiveness, rewarding relationships, and a calm, secure, well-balanced life. Theoretically, the study implies that women choosing to engage in rural family firms seek non-material benefits, such as work–life balance and social support, and may be driven in part by a sense of psychological ownership that extends to the rural community.

The findings provide novel insights on women as active agents in navigating their lives and the intrinsic (e.g. alignment of personal values) and extrinsic (e.g. community support) motives that inform their decisions. The study also raises questions regarding how women perceive themselves as “fitting in” to rural settings and to what extent the sense of security within these settings that the women describe may be contingent upon factors such as their families' embeddedness within the community as well as their conformity to the local social norms.

Organic food processing must include organic principles to be authentic. This qualitative study aims to understand the processors' understanding of organic food processing quality.

This study is based on semi-structured expert interviews with eight employees of six purely or partly organic dairies from Germany and Switzerland. Interview themes are (1) quality of organic milk processing in general, (2) assessment of specific processing techniques, (3) product quality of organic milk and (4) flow of information between producer and consumer. The interviews have been audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and thematically analysed.

(1) Experts prefer minimal processing; some prefer artisanal processing, whilst others stress the advantages of mechanisation. (2) High temperature short time (HTST) pasteurisation and mechanical processing techniques are accepted; ultra-high-temperature (UHT) milk processing is partly rejected. (3) Traditional taste and valuable ingredients should be present in the final product. Natural variances are judged positively. (4) Consumers' low level of food technology literacy is challenging for communication.

The results cannot be generalised due to the qualitative study design. Further studies, e.g. qualitative case analyses and studies with a quantitative design, are necessary to deepen the results.

The paper shows which processing technologies experts consider suitable or unsuitable for organic milk. The paper also identifies opportunities to bridge the perceived gap between processors' and consumers' demands.

The study shows the challenges of processors in expressing the processors' understanding of process quality.