The Reliability of Organic Certification: An Approach to Investigate the Audit Quality

Increasing complexity and first scandals indicate that the current control structures for organic food is insufficient. The main challenges are different methods of implementation on the national level and the collaborative responsibility between the public and the private sector. Both often cause lacking clarity and disagreements. The following contribution focuses on instruments to enhance the quality of certification of organic food. Only a few of the suggested instruments have been included as necessary requirements yet. Given the risk of deficient quality assurance and at the same time increasing control costs, it seems urgent to trigger discussions on risk-oriented auditing and to improve the current certification system

Branding in the red meat sector - A conjoint study from Germany

During the last years, low price products (e.g., private label) gain increasing market shares in the German meat market. Compared to other countries the share of branded meat from integrated production chains is very low and most fresh meat is sold unlabelled. This study analyzes the advantages of brands from an information economic perspective and emphasizes branding as an important quality assurance and signaling tool. As brand exte nsions offer the opportunity to introduce brands to new markets at much lower costs we examine the brand transfer from the poultry to the red meat market taking Wiesenhof, the German brand leader for chicken and poultry, as an example. We use conjoint and cluster analysis to calculate willingness to pay and market shares for different consumer segments. The results demonstrate, that branded meat reaches almost two third of market share while the low priced private label always gets the lowest proportions of consumer preferences. Given the choice, customers do not always prefer the cheapest offer but trust in branded meat even more. This market potential is actually not used to advantage. The overall total market share of meat brands lies below 5%.Branding, quality signal, brand extension, meat market, Marketing,

Attitudes of Chinese consumers towards retail formats

The Chinese consumer goods market is widely considered to be one of the economic hot spots of the world. China seems to be the market with the largest growth potential within the next decade. Multina - tional retail companies, for example, Wal-Mart, Metro and Carrefour have made large investments to open up this new market. However, parallel to the positive aspects of the market development, foreign retail companies entering the market encounter numerous risks and difficulties. Whereas questions concerned with logistical problems are being discussed more often, analyses focusing on the shopping behavior of Chinese consumers are rare. In this context, the following report provides information on store preferences based on a comprehensive survey of 800 citizens of Wuhan. In detail, the research focuses on decision- making problems of Chinese consumer s and determines their preferences for foreign chain stores on the one hand and for domestic supermarkets and traditional retail formats on the other hand. All in all, traditional wet markets still dominate shopping behaviour. Nevertheless, modern retail outlets are ac - cepted as an alternative, although they are mainly used in addition to the daily shopping at traditional wet markets. However, this research shows that even in a more domestic market - oriented city like Wuhan, traditional shopping patterns are being abandoned and more differentiated shopping patterns are emerging.Retail and Distribution Management, Consumer Behavior, Store Preferences, Consumer/Household Economics,

The Quality of Audits - A Comparative Study of Auditing and Certification Schemes in the Food Sector

In spite of the increasing number of certification schemes in the food sector, there is only few research about the economics of certification. Given the rapid growth and the lack of experience the actors have to cope with different forms of opportunistic behaviour. The following paper describes the basic structure and information economics reasons why certification schemes are created. Subsequently, an institutionalistic model is presented which includes several starting points to increase quality of certification systems mainly based on analogies in financial auditing.Audit quality, New Institutional Economics, Certification schemes, Organic Certification, Industrial Organization,

Phase transitions in dense matter

As the density of matter increases, atomic nuclei disintegrate into nucleons and, eventually, the nucleons themselves disintegrate into quarks. The phase transitions (PT's) between these phases can vary from steep first order to smooth crossovers, depending on certain conditions. First-order PT's with more than one globally conserved charge, so-called non-congruent PT's, have characteristic differences compared to congruent PT's. In this conference proceeding we discuss the non-congruence of the quark deconfinement PT at high densities and/or temperatures relevant for heavy-ion collisions, neutron stars, proto-neutron stars, supernova explosions, and compact-star mergers.Comment: Proceedings of XXVIth International Conference on Ultrarelativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions (Quark Matter 2017

Current Advancements of and Future Developments for Fourth Party Logistics in a Digital Future

This paper aims to analyze the potential future of the 4PL concept based on expert opinions with special regard to the influence of digitalization coming with a disruptive trans-formation of supply chains. Service arrangements, provider capabilities and benefits resulting from a 4PL partnership are compared in current and future configurations. The research follows an explorative mixed methods approach with semi structured interviews followed by an expert panel. This builds a basis for an online survey questionnaire to inquire on important future aspects for the 4PL concept by a sample of respondents from multinational companies. Our results show a clear trend away from simply organizing transportation and logistics activities towards the provision of an IT platform as well as further value-added service activities such as planning, analytics and monitoring. Along with this, IT capabilities appear to be an important differentiator for 4PL providers in the future. Moreover, relationships between 4PL providers and their clients become closer and more strategic, which leads to a customer valuing not only direct cost reductions but rather improvements resulting from optimized operations through superior analysis and planning functions

The Fraunhofer Quantum Computing Portal - www.qc.fraunhofer.de - A web-based Simulator of Quantum Computing Processes

Fraunhofer FIRST develops a computing service and collaborative workspace providing a convenient tool for simulation and investigation of quantum algorithms. To broaden the twenty qubit limit of workstation-based simulations to the next qubit decade we provide a dedicated high memorized Linux cluster with fast Myrinet interconnection network together with a adapted parallel simulator engine. This simulation service supplemented by a collaborative workspace is usable everywhere via web interface and integrates both hardware and software as collaboration and investigation platform for the quantum community. The beta test version realizes all common one, two and three qubit gates, arbitrary one and two bit gates, orthogonal measurements as well as special gates like Oracle, Modulo function, Quantum Fourier Transformation and arbitrary Spin-Hamiltonians up to 31 qubits. For a restricted gate set it feasible to investigate circuits with up to sixty qubits. URL: http://www.qc.fraunhofer.d

Neutron star properties in a chiral SU(3) model

We investigate various properties of neutron star matter within an e ective chiral SU(3)L × SU(3)R model. The predictions of this model are compared with a Walecka-type model. It is demonstrated that the importance of hy- peron degrees are strongly depending on the interaction used, even if the equation of state near saturation density is nearly the same in both models. While the Walecka-type model predicts a strange star core with strangeness fraction fS 4/3, the chiral model allows only for fS 1/3 and predicts that 0, + and 0 will not exist in star, in contrast to the Walecka-type model. PACS: 26.60+c, 21.65+f, 24.10J

Ökoverbände in der Identitätskrise? Eine clubtheoretische Analyse

Compliance with the rules of organic production has been motivated intrinsically. Cooperative behaviour, thus, has been a key issue in assuring organic quality. However, the environment is continuously changing. An increasing number of farmers is producing organic food not only driven by altruism, but by economic factors and public support (i.e., subsidies). The following contribution aims to reveal determinants for an efficient quality assurance within an organic farming association. It focuses on changes related to the introduction of a public certification system and the “loss” of social cohesion among the organic farmers. Based on the theory of club goods, an application of the decision theory approach underlines the analysis