Arianna Ruggeri

Purpose: Food companies and consumers are increasingly interested in healthy food and beverages. Coffee is one of the most commonly consumed beverages worldwide. There is increasing consensus that coffee consumption can have beneficial effects on human body. This paper aims at exploring Twitter messages' content and sentiment towards health attributes of coffee.Design/methodology/approach: The research adopted a utilitarian and hedonic consumer behaviour perspective to analyse online community messages. A sample of 13,000 tweets, from around 4,800 users, that mentions keywords coffee and health was collected on a daily basis for a month in mid-2017. The tweets were categorized with a term frequency analysis, keyword-in-context analysis and sentiment analysis.Findings: Results showed that the majority of tweets are neutral or slightly positive towards coffee’s effects on health. Media and consumers are dynamic Twitter users. Findings support that coffee consumption brings favourable emotions, wellness, energy, positive state of mind and an enjoyable and trendy lifestyle. Many tweets have a positive perception of coffee health benefits, especially relating to mental and physical well-being.Research limitations/implications: The high number of users and tweets analysed compensates the limited amount of time of data collection, Twitter messages' restricted number of characters and quantitative software analysis limitations.Practical implications: The research provides valuable suggestions for food and beverage industry managers.Originality/value: This work adds value to the literature by expanding scholars' research on food product attributes perception analysis by using social media as a source of information. Moreover, it provides valuable information on marketable coffee attributes.

Purpose: As indicated in the Italian law (No. 109-1996), agri-food co-operatives can also play a role in combatting mafia-type systems by choosing to grow their food products in lands confiscated from mafia-type organisations. These food products provide individuals with a new opportunity to fight criminal organisations on the marketplace. The purpose of this study is to explore how people react to a social marketing initiative devoted to promoting food “buycotting” to counteract mafia-type organisations in Italy.Design/methodology/approach: The data were obtained from a convenience sample of 339 Italians, and the study adopted a model inspired by the general theory of marketing ethics. A structural equation model was applied to estimate both the parameter and coefficient functions.Findings: Individuals recognise the ethical value of “buycotting”. However, they perceive this form of critical choice as not yet being fully effective in counteracting mafia-type systems in Italy.Practical implications: The results suggest that promotional and psychological approaches from marketing literature can be effectively used to influence the consumer’s ethical judgement by selectively communicating and emphasising the benefits of the critical consumption investigated.Originality/value: This is one of the first studies to address consumers’ ethical judgments and their reactions towards buycotting food as a critical choice to reward socially responsible corporations.

Purpose: Healthy food sales have increased in recent decades. Retailers are widening their marketing management approach, including the use of social media to communicate with consumers and to promote healthy food. The purpose of this paper is to investigate European retailers’ social media communication content used to promote healthy food products, by analysing retailers’ Twitter messages and accounts characteristics, retailers’ Twitter messages content on healthy food and retailers’ Twitter accounts orientation on healthy food. Design/methodology/approach: Data include approximately 74,000 tweets sent in 2016 from 90 corporate and brand accounts. The tweets were sent by the top 36 European retailers. Data elaboration includes quantitative content analysis of Twitter messages, which is used to identify healthy food categories’ occurrences and co-occurrences. Then, multiple multivariate-linear regression analyses explore the relation between retailers’ characteristics and healthy food messaging and between the overall content of retailer accounts and a healthy food focus. Findings: The vast majority of retailers’ tweets on healthy food issues mainly address general health and sustainability issues. Tweets about food health and nutrition refer to food types, meals or consumer segments. Tweets about food sustainability refer to general issues. Analysis of retailer accounts shows that the larger the retailer is, the lower the relevance of healthy food. Retailers with high numbers of tweets and followers tend to decrease their attention to healthy food promotion. Compared to retailers with lower revenues, retailers with higher revenues tend to send a higher number of tweets that focus on healthy food but the incidence is lower compared to the overall accounts’ messaging. Research limitations/implications: As the study focuses on a single category of food products, further research into other categories of retail products may contribute to a wider perspective. Future research may include graphical content/emoticons and extend the analysis to other social media platforms. Finally, social media data allow studies to cover a wide geographical area. However, in order to also value non-English written messaging, this research introduces some approximations in language interpretation. Practical implications: The research provides insights into how retailers use social media and provides an overview of how retailers manage their social media communication in one of the most promising food product categories. Retailers manage social media communication content cautiously to minimise controversial issues. This study provides insights into the need to more effectively target the increasing number of social media users. Originality/value: The research approach and findings of this study extend prior research on retailers’ communication management by improving the understanding of retailers’ use of social media and marketing communication content for their key products, focusing on healthy food.

Malnutrition, obesity, type 2 diabetes, micronutrient deficiencies, and the increase in non-communicable diseases are among the future European key challenges in health and welfare. Agriculture and rural development policies can positively contribute to a healthier and nutritious supply of food. The objective of the research is to analyze to what extent European 2007–2013 and 2014–2020 rural development programmes address the nexus between agriculture, food, health, and nutrition to respond to the evolving dietary needs. The research carries out a quali-quantitative content analysis on all 210 European rural development programmes. Results show that the interconnection between agriculture, food, health, and nutrition is present, with differences in the European agricultural and rural policy programming periods. The main interlinking issues of the nexus are food safety, food quality, diseases, nutritional aspect, animal health and welfare, plant health, and environmental health. Healthier and nutritious food-related issues are emerging, addressing dietary needs, and sustaining consumer food trends. Healthy and nutritious food is pursued by combating foodborne communicable diseases and non-communicable diseases. The future Common Agricultural Policy, including its rural dimensions, should support the consumption of healthy foods produced in ways that are environmentally and economically sustainable.

Undercapitalization has been recognized as a problem affecting Italian co-operatives to perform in modern agri-food markets. An empirical study on 50 Italian agri-food co-operatives was carried out to investigate co-operatives members’ commitment capability to impact on the level of capitalization. The level of capitalization was also investigated as a mean to influence co-operatives’ innovation and subsequently their performance. The results show how co-operatives with more committed memberships display higher levels of capitalization and that capitalization positively relates with innovation levels. The latter is also confirmed to enhance co-operatives’ performance. These results are relevant from a managerial point of view as they reveal the importance of members’ commitment in this particular type of organizations and provide new insights to improve co-operatives’ innovation and performance.

Palm oil is the world most used vegetable oil and its use as food ingredient is criticized for creating environmental, socio‐economic, and health sustainability challenges. In Europe, the debate on palm oil sustainability has strongly intensified in the latest years involving several agri‐food chain actors and stakeholders. The research explores Twitter content of key palm oil agri‐food chain actors on palm oil multiple sustainability dimensions, focusing on the European context. First, the study applied a qualitative deductive approach to categorize palm oil sustainability dimensions. Second, among the 463 palm oil agri‐food chain companies identified, 198 have an active Twitter account, including world palm oil producers, European bakery and chocolate manufacturers, and European food retailers. One hundred seven accounts tweet on palm oil. Third, a term frequency analysis and an in‐depth textual analysis of tweets on palm oil sustainability issues were carried out. Results confirms that all agri‐food chain actors communicate about palm oil sustainability, adopting a multi‐dimension outlook. Palm oil producers actively use Twitter to promote palm oil sustainability, whereas European manufacturers and retailers limit their activity to react to consumers' questioning. Whereas palm oil producers tend to shape consumers' opinion over the benefits and the opportunities of palm oil use, food manufacturers and retailers adopt a purely informative approach on sustainability certification, avoiding the engagement over sensitive issues. Health is the most mentioned sustainability dimension. The study also confirms differences between agri‐food chain actors' marketing communication. Finally, the study confirms that, in the case of sensitive issues, as for palm oil sustainability, Twitter is as able to drive companies' communication.

Purpose: The paper aims to investigate pro-social behaviour of Italian consumers during the decision-making process of buying food produced in lands confiscated from Mafia-type organisations. This is assumed as a form of buycotting, thus as an ethical purchasing choice to contribute to social change. Design/methodology/approach: Data from 339 interviews were elaborated with a cluster analysis. The difference between groups was confirmed using MANOVA, whereas the multivariate multiple regression analysis was carried out to assess the difference between clusters. Findings: Three types of consumer groups are identified: absolutists, exceptionists and subjectivists. Coherent with previous studies, findings also highlight the relevance of information acquisition and of the self-effectiveness perception as key factors to stimulate pro-social behaviours. Originality/value: With a social marketing perspective, the paper offers useful suggestions to promote political consumerism as a critical choice to contribute to fight against Mafia-type organisations and to spread a culture of lawfulness.

Purpose: – At a European level, Italy experiences one of the highest percentages of population at risk of poverty (AROP). However, studies on this consumer segment are scarce. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the food behaviours of Italian female consumers, distinguishing similarities and differences due to age and level of income. Design/methodology/approach: – The investigation adopted an inductive approach in order to analyse and confirm the determinants of food behaviours. Data were collected through four focus groups. Data elaboration included content analyses with term frequency – inverse document frequency index and multidimensional scaling technique. Findings: – The food behaviours of Italian female consumers are based on a common set of semantic categories and theoretical dimensions that are coherent with those applied by previous studies. The age of consumers impacts the relevance attributed to the categories and income contributes to the explanation of the conceptual relations among the categories that determine food behaviours. The approach to food of younger and mature consumers AROP is strongly driven by constraints such as price and time. The study did not confirm a link between a poor health attitude and low socio-economic status. Research limitations/implications: – The outcomes achieved can be strengthened by quantitative analyses to characterise the relations occurring among the factors and dimensions that influence the food behaviours of consumers AROP. Originality/value: – The study increases knowledge about Italian female consumers and provides an initial contribution to the analysis of the food behaviour of the population AROP.