Collaborative relationships and branding policies: successful strategies forsmall size farms

摘要

Product differentiation and branding are crucial to allow agro-food producers to adjust successfully their supply to changing consumer needs. In most cases, individual farmers cannot implement, all by themselves, effective brand policies for standardized or quality goods. Effective forms of coordination among producers, on the one hand, and between producers and processors and distributors, on the other hand, emerge therefore as a necessary condition to create and manage collective brands enabling product differentiation and the satisfaction of quality and safety assurances requested by consumers. The aim of this paper is: (i) to review the relevant theoretical literature, in order to identify the foundations on which it is possible to build up a collaborative relation among the agents operating in the agro-food system, able to manage effectively and efficiently a collective brand; (ii) to analyze three case studies of brand policies developed by producers associations and vertical coordination organizations in Italy.