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This study aims to frame the authenticity–standardisation relationship in international gastronomy retailing and explores how and to what extent the food place of origin and the urban context in which the gastronomy stores are located shape customers' in-store experience.

This paper analyses the case of Eataly, which combines specialty grocery stores and restaurants disseminating the Italian eating style, quality food and regional traditions internationally. Facebook reviews (1,018) of four Eataly stores – New York City, Rome, Munich and Istanbul were analysed, adopting a web content mining approach.

Place of origin, quality and hosting city categories frame the gastronomic in-store experience. Standardisation elements (shared across the four analysed stores) and authenticity elements (specific to a single store) are identified towards defining three archetypical authenticity–standardisation relationships, namely originated authenticity, standardised authenticity and localised authenticity.

This study proposes original modelling that disentangles the authenticity–standardisation paradox in international gastronomy retailing. It provides evidence of the intertwining of the place of origin and the city brand in customers' in-store experience.

The paper aims to explore how companies communicate their heritage by drawing on heritage marketing and corporate communications literature and mapping the corporate heritage communication strategies of iconic Italian brands.

The study adopts an inductive multiple case study approach, analysing the communication of corporate heritage by nine iconic Italian brands (Pastificio Lucio Garofalo, Barovier & Toso, Pasta Farina, Ducati, Amaro Montenegro, Fiat, Bonomelli, Olivetti and Illy).

In communicating corporate heritage, companies adopt different strategies that vary along two main dimensions – the subject of the story and the tone of voice of the content. The strategies are: (1) heritage for authenticity; (2) heritage for market leadership; and (3) heritage for continuity.

From a theoretical point of view, the study highlights that heritage marketing strategies vary according to underlying strategic themes and narrative approaches. From a managerial point of view, it offers a preliminary guide for the development of corporate heritage communications, also providing indications for their implementation.

This study is amongst the firsts to investigate the strategic antecedents that can shape corporate heritage communication strategies. It represents an integration of the existing literature, which is limited to the descriptive presentation of heritage marketing principles and tools.

Food waste is a severe problem affecting the supply chain due to its significant adverse social and environmental effects. Even if the topic is hotly debated in the literature, there is a lack of research about the success factors influencing food waste prevention initiatives retailers undertake.

The research analyzes how several variables (i.e. product-related variables and technology-enabling variables) might impact the success of the sales of products close to the expiration date that is sold at a discounted price. Data from 390.000 products sold at a discounted price in 2020 and 2021 by a large Italian food retailer were examined with a regression analysis.

The results highlight that both product-related and technology-enabling variables influence the success of food prevention initiatives aimed at selling products close to the expiration date at a discounted price. In particular, the authors stress the importance of digital technologies in supporting food waste prevention initiatives.

The study offers several practical implications for managers in structuring a waste prevention initiative. The introduction of digital technologies, the monitoring of specific variables or the ability to find synergies with other food waste prevention initiatives are discussed to support retailers in reducing food losses.

The paper is focused on the retailer perspective, which is barely investigated due to the difficulty in finding data.

The purpose of this research is to trace the evolution of the claims used for advertising food products in Italian magazines, by analysing the content and structure of the claims, the target audiences and the elements that have the greatest influence on the presence of the claims in food advertising.

On the basis of the research conducted by Pratt and Pratt (1995), revised and adapted to the Italian food context, the authors designed a matrix of 1,316 advertisements, which were selected based on the analysis of 67,340 advertisements and using the reference to the food sector as a discriminator. The advertisements were extrapolated from a sample of six Italian magazines, so as to determine the extent to which the various demographic groups in Italy are exposed to print advertising for food, beverages and food supplements. The authors examined the frequency of the relevant advertising forms over a period of four years, from January 2014 to December 2017.

The results revealed the main types of claims used in the four-year period, as well as the statistically significant differences between the different magazine panels, as concerns the frequency and the types of messages. Moreover, a strong relationship between the number of advertisements in the magazines and the time of the year was also ascertained, as well as significant gender variations.

This study introduces the trends and dynamics of the Italian printed advertising for food to the relevant scientific literature. The results yielded by this research have added further implications and contributions to the existing studies, as concerns claim diffusion based on type, gender and seasonality, and the authors also provide important insights to various socio-economical stakeholders.

This paper aims to identify what ethical attributes tourists associate with national parks’ brands shown on food souvenir labels and the influence of such attributes on purchase motivations.

An exploratory study was carried out involving a total of 102 Italian tourists, who were interviewed at two different souvenir shops in Italy. Respondents were first asked to describe what images and values they were associating with the visited Italian National Park. The second level of questions related to the association of food products with national parks and the purchase motivations of food products branded with the national park’s label. The ethical attributes associated with the national parks’ brands and their relevance in purchase motivations were detected and analyzed through content analysis.

The analysis of the national park brand allows highlighting the food souvenir role in communicating ethical values that influence the perceived quality of food as well as tourists’ purchase motivations. The analysis reveals interesting implications for the enhancement of local productions in tourist destinations, more specifically, how the place brand can act as a valuable communication tool. Particular attention is given to the crucial role that national parks’ brands play in strengthening the value proposition of small businesses located within parks. This vision must be implemented from the perspective of mutual promotion of local food and tourism in these parks.

The results of this paper contributed to the literature by filling the gap regarding the role of place brands in promoting food souvenirs.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate food bank actors’ knowledge of food insecurity in Germany and in Italy, as well as interactions between food bank actors and food bank users. The study builds on a knowledge framework from an educational context and applies it to food banks.

The study uses a qualitative research approach. In all, 22 in-depth interviews were recorded, transcribed and analyzed through inductive qualitative content analysis.

German and Italian food bank actors interviewed had at least situational knowledge on food insecurity. Some actors of the Italian food bank also showed procedural knowledge. Interactions between food bank personnel and users were affected by feelings of gratitude, shame, anger and disappointment.

The study explores food bank personnel’s knowledge on food insecurity, which appears to be a knowledge gap, even though many prior studies were dedicated to food banks and food insecurity. The study contributes to knowledge systematization to provide best practice recommendations for volunteer-user interaction, and suggests how food bank managers and volunteers’ knowledge can be improved.

Given the importance of food waste in the economic, social, health and environmental dimensions, the purpose of this work is to detect, through a systematic and configurative literature review on food-waste-measurement methodologies, the global approaches, characteristics, limitations, opportunities and results applied within the literature. The analysis of these papers provides useful information about how far we are from international action plans and, therefore, how we need to direct programs and policies to measure and reduce food waste and ensure food security and food safety.

The authors have conducted a systematic, configurative literature review on food waste measurement methodologies applied only within empirical studies published in academic peer-reviewed scientific journals. Based on the Commission Delegated Decision (EU) 2019/1597 of May 3, 2019 (OJEU, 2019) regarding common methodologies and minimum quality requirements for the homogeneous assessment of food waste quantities and composition, the authors investigated the issue on Web of Science Core Collection (WoS) from June 2000 to June 2020. The authors researched keywords within article titles, abstracts and author keywords by utilizing 34 different research strings.

The proposed review particularly refers to following topics: measurement methodologies applied according to the Commission Delegated Decision (EU) 2019/1597; editorial placement and publication timeline; geographical area; food supply-chain stage and publication journals; and the main features, limitations, opportunities and results for each measurement methodology as presented by authors. Among the first 48,000 results, only 58 academic articles are perfectly in line with the aim of the review, highlighting the lack of standardized methodologies, the limits of those proposed and the deficiency of comparable results to achieve sustainable international goals.

The proposed review is one of the few concerning food waste measurement methodologies. Food waste measurement is essential to rebalance the actual inadequate food system and to switch it toward a fair, healthy and environmentally friendly one, thereby (1) managing the human nutrition system paradox of hungry, undernourished and over-weight people; (2) reducing food insecurity; (3) ensuring each living being's access to healthy, nutritious and sustainable food; and (4) reducing environmental impacts (neutral or positive impact) and the loss of biodiversity and mitigating climate change.

This paper aims to explore how customer involvement unfolds in the development of a smart product. Smart product development poses new challenges to firms. In particular, the buyers’ and users’ involvement has shown novel dynamics in smart product development. These peculiarities are linked with the specific characteristics of the digital technology embedded into the smart products. This study’s rationale is to analyse the frictions arising from potential divergent objectives between the focal firm and its customers when digital technologies are embedded in traditional products.

This study adopted an explorative and qualitative approach to investigate new emerging dynamics of customer involvement during technological development. A coffee machine producer is selected as a case study to uncover new insights and a novel perspective on the phenomenon of customer involvement in smart product development. Data analysis followed an abductive approach that allowed to identify the dimensions of friction emerging during the technological development process.

The case study analysis depicts that smart product development presents novel customer involvement dynamics. In particular, this study abductively identifies dimensions of friction emerging between the focal firm and buyers/users. Friction arises in the technological interface between the actors involved. These dimensions of friction address the complexities of developing technology in terms of smart products with customer involvement. This study suggests that embedding of technology into an existing product might change how customers are involved.

Even though customer involvement in product innovation has been extensively studied in management literature, this paper focused on a new type of innovation, smart products. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no previous studies have yet empirically explored customers’ involvement while embedding digital technologies into existing products to create smart products. In particular, this study sheds light on the dimensions of friction emerging between the focal firm and the actors of the business network. This study unfolds novel contributions to the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing literature on technological development.

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.