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Communicating imperceptible product attributes through traceability: A case study in an organic food supply chain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 June 2010

Helena Lindh*
Affiliation:
Division of Packaging Logistics, Lund University, SE-221 00Lund, Sweden.
Annika Olsson
Affiliation:
Division of Packaging Logistics, Lund University, SE-221 00Lund, Sweden.
*
*Corresponding author: helena.lindh@plog.lth.se
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Abstract

Companies in the food industry are driven to improve their traceability for several reasons. The primary reasons are food safety and quality. Another is the response to the increased interest among consumers in imperceptible product attributes such as organic, fair trade, dolphin-safe and non genetically modified (non-GMO). Such attributes are hard to distinguish and thus require generally enhanced traceability in order to verify their existence. This has led to an emergent area in which actors engage in gaining and maintaining traceability and communicating it to the consumers. This paper describes the relations between the actors in a supply chain (SC) in the field of organic food systems. It examines the objectives each actor has for gaining and maintaining traceability throughout the SC. The focus on organic relates to the challenge for the companies to ensure this imperceptible product attribute throughout the entire food system. A single case study was conducted in an organic food system providing organic ice cream products. The data collection included semi-structured interviews, observations, a review of internal documents and a survey among the participating companies. The findings illustrate and elaborate on the objectives companies have for engaging in traceability. The objectives identified are divided into three categories: food safety and quality, managing the SC and internal resources and communication with consumers. The survey confirms the results from the interviews that all actors want to engage in traceability. They prioritize the objectives differently, however. The study highlights the value of close relations between the actors when addressing consumer concerns regarding product and process characteristics, such as the imperceptible organic attribute.

Information

Type
Research Papers
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010
Figure 0

Table 1. List of food industry and consumer concerns.

Figure 1

Figure 1. The different actors (the amounts of actors are illustrated by the numbers) in the SC for the product studied, inspired by Lambert and Cooper11, and the selected focus of the study (i.e., the food system under study).

Figure 2

Table 2. Key characteristics of the companies involved.

Figure 3

Table 3. Interview respondents and procedure.

Figure 4

Figure 2. Aggregated survey answers in the three categories of traceability objectives indicated on a five-point scale (1–5) if they disagreed, partly disagreed, had no opinion, partly agreed or agreed.