Hartl / International Food and Agribusiness Management Review Volume 9, Issue 2, 2006
about what is good and bad, they are more and more loyal and they are willing to
pay a premium.
Because another problem is that imitated Italian products are made at the lowest
cost. China is becoming a very big competitor, because they can produce almost any
product at a much lower cost than Europe or the US. So if we do not build on the
cultural side, European agribusiness will not have a business in the next 20 years,
because it will be always cheaper to produce outside of Europe. So it is really a
question of survival that has to be done in the next 15 years.
So we are against the counterfeiting of products and this should apply for all
countries. We are not trying to sell only Italian products; I think there is a space for
everybody. Thus, the identity is becoming very important in globalized systems. The
concept is to promote the identity, because otherwise there is no future.
What consequences will these developments have in the future?
Gianluigi Zenti: The overall quality of the food is a problem. From 1995 the quality
of US food went up significantly. However, in the future the quality of food will split
into different directions: there will be one consumer segment that is looking for
higher quality and one bigger segment that is looking for lower quality at a lower
price. Before the market was very homogenous and the overall quality was going
up. To serve this development is to segment; we need to start working to serve the
higher quality segment, that is looking more for emotional and aspiration aspects.
In addition the distribution of food will change. I think that discounter like Aldi are
going to become the way of selling food, because they are very efficient. On the other
side, some consumers are still looking to buy high-quality products. Thus, other
chains that are specialized in high-quality foods will also gain market share. For
instance, in the US Whole Foods became very successful, who only sell natural and
organic products. Thus, there will be also a big segmentation on the retailers’ level.
So overall we are in a situation, where consumers are changing dramatically,
because their expectations are changing.
Is consumer demandpredictable? How do you discover trends in your company?
Gianluigi Zenti: We do a lot of analytical research. In addition, we do a lot of
interviews and we have two locations were we invite consumers and we film what
they do, how they cook or how they make decisions. We conduct all of this research
in-house, we do not buy research from outside because everybody else has the same
information that you buy from outside. You need to develop a method of
understanding consumers, so market research is very important in our company. In
addition, we do a lot of tests in different countries to find out common needs, so we
can launch global products. We do not want to have specific products for every
© 2006 International Food and Agribusiness Management Association (IAMA). All rights reserved.
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