An inventory of recent innovations in fruit and fruit products

The goals of this study were to make an inventory of recent and ongoing fruit and fruit product innovations, to assess what novelty or improvement they offer, and whether consumers could identify and/or recognise them. Researchers from 11 European countries submitted 386 examples of fruit and fruit product innovations. The list of innovations obtained has been coded, categorised, sorted, and reduced in subsequent stages. First, the examples received were categorised according to the Oslo Manual definitions. Second, product and marketing innovations were selected, as they are the only ones that were likely to be recognised by consumers. Next, analysis revealed that the novelties these innovations offered related to Convenience, Health, Differentiation, Target Group, Information, Sensory Characteristics, In Home and/or Out of Home Quality. Some innovations offered only one novel aspect, whereas others offered multiple aspects. Interrelationships between novel aspects are discussed for those innovations that offered a combination of aspects

The paradigm of consumer-driven and responsive supply chains: An integrated project approach

This paper describes an integrated project approach that forms the basis of the studies on consumer-driven innovative and responsive supply chains in ISAFRUIT Pillar 1. This integrated approach leads to a wide range of indepth results on trends, preferences, and innovativeness of the European consumer in the context of fruit, and on product innovation, chain innovativeness, and transition strategies for the European fruit industry. Differences ill, for instance, preferences for different fresh, prepared, and processed fruit products across consumers and across consumption situations, and differences in consumer innovativeness in the context of novel fruit products, lead towards a cross-cultural European segmentation and a variety of consumer-driven fruit chain strategies to valorise the added value of fruit products. Inputs from social, natural, and technical sciences are combined to optimise true consumer-driven innovativeness

Multidimensional Scaling with Regional Restrictions for Facet Theory: An Application to Levi's Political Protest Data

Multidimensional scaling (MDS) is often used for the analysis of correlation matrices of items generated by a facet theory design. The emphasis of the analysis is on regional hypotheses on the location of the items in the MDS solution. An important regional hypothesis is the axial constraint where the items from different levels of a facet are assumed to be located in different parallel slices. The simplest approach is to do an MDS and draw the parallel lines separating the slices as good as possible by hand. Alternatively, Borg and Shye (1995) propose to automate the second step. Borg and Groenen (1997, 2005) proposed a simultaneous approach for ordered facets when the number of MDS dimensions equals the number of facets. In this paper, we propose a new algorithm that estimates an MDS solution subject to axial constraints without the restriction that the number of facets equals the number of dimensions. The algorithm is based on constrained iterative majorization of De Leeuw and Heiser (1980) with special constraints. This algorithm is applied to Levi’s (1983) data on political protests.Axial Partitioning;Constrained Estimation;Facet Theory;Iterative Majorization;Multidimensional Scaling;Regional Restrictions

Mijtbestrijding in bollen alleen mogelijk in combinatie met een Actellic-filter

Ondanks de toepassing van Actellic in een gesloten cel, treffen de waterschappen pirimos-methyl al een aantal jaren aan in het oppervlaktewater. Uit onderzoek van PPO bleek dat dit afkomstig was van condenswater dat ontstaat tijdens de koude bewaring van bollen. PPO ontwikkelt en test samen met Alterra en Amafiltergroup een filteropstelling die dit probleem moet oplossen

Brand search

Consumers frequently buy the products they find most easily. This has forced manufacturers and retailers to invest in package design, shelf layouts, and expensive advertising campaigns to facilitate findability of their products. Surprisingly, there is no research in marketing that investigates how consumers localize products, which we call brand search. This dissertation investigates the brand search process and develops a statistical model that describes the eye movements of consumers while they are searching for a specific product. The proposed model uncovers the search strategies of consumers and suggests which marketing tools manufacturers and retailers may use to influence this process.

Trade-offs Between Consumer Concerns: An Application for Pork Production

This paper studies multiple attributes of pork production and analyses the trade-offs that consumers make between them. Results show that without considering the trade-offs, animal welfare and food safety are on average perceived as the most important attributes. However, including trade-offs, Taste and Price become major concerns. Conclusions are nuanced as for a number of segments and specific trade-offs Taste and Price are relatively less important. Results support the implementation of differentiated chain designs with distinct and innovative decisions for trade-offs to be made.Customised conjoint analysis, Segmentation, Pork production, Consumer/Household Economics, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

Transitie duurzame tuinbouw: lokale initiatieven in internationaal perspectief: Analyse van een aantal cases in ontwikkeling

Samenvatting Tal van internationale initiatieven leveren kennisvragen op voor Wageningen UR Glastuinbouw. Eén daarvan is dat landen in ontwikkeling Wageningen UR Glastuinbouw benaderen met kennisvragen over bedekte teelt. In deze landen zijn ook initiatieven uit het Nederlandse tuinbouwbedrijfsleven te vinden, zoals rozenkwekerijen in Kenia. Een andere ontwikkeling is die van metropolitane landbouw in zowel ontwikkelde als zich ontwikkelende economieën. De vraag is hoe duurzaam deze initiatieven zijn. Blijven ze overeind als de initiatiefnemers (zoals Nederlandse kwekers, nationale overheden en subsidieverstrekkers) zich na verloop van tijd terug trekken? Is onderzoek en advies van Wageningen UR aan dergelijke landen wel duurzaam, gezien de specifieke en complexe context van dergelijke initiatieven, en met de weinige buitenlandse valuta die dergelijke landen beschikbaar hebben? Het Multi-Level Perspective (MLP) is een veel gebruikt instrument om transities te beschrijven en analyseren als zijnde een wisselwerking tussen ‘regime’, ‘landschap’ en ‘niche’. Aan de hand van dit raamwerk zijn een tweetal cases van transitie naar duurzame tuinbouw beschreven en geanalyseerd. De eerste casus speelt zich af in de zich ontwikkelende sierteelt sector in Ethiopië. Binnen deze casus zijn de effecten van het Wageningen UR Glastuinbouw project “Integrated Pest Management in Ethiopië” beschouwd, alsook de rol van Wageningen UR Glastuinbouw in dit project. Het project heeft bijgedragen bij aan de vorming van een volwassen niche, die het bestaande regime weet bij te sturen richting een meer duurzame vorm van tuinbouw.. De tweede casus gaat over de transitie naar (grootschalige) stadslandbouw in Detroit. Het rapport sluit af met enkele aanbevelingen voor toekomstige, succesvolle bijdragen van Wageningen UR Glastuinbouw aan duurzame transities en met enkele beschouwingen over lokale, nationale en internationale schaalniveaus en het MLP raamwerk als analyse instrument. Summary Many international initiatives in horticulture cause knowledge questions for Wageningen UR Greenhouse Horticulture. One of these is that developing countries approach the Institute with knowledge questions about protected cultivation. In these countries also initiatives can be found from Dutch horticulture business, such as rose farms in Kenya. Other initiatives concerns the development of metropolitan horticulture, both in developing and developed economies. The question arises how sustainable these initiatives of both Dutch business and Wageningen UR are. Will local initiatives continue if Dutch growers leaves the country? Is the research of Wageningen UR in such countries sustainable, given the specific and complex context of such initiatives, and the limited availability of foreign currency in these countries? The Multi-Level Perspective (MLP) framework is widely used to describe and analyze transitions as a result of interaction between 'regime', 'landscape' and 'niche'. With this framework two cases of transition to sustainable horticulture are described and analysed.. The first case takes place in the emerging floriculture sector in Ethiopia. In this case, the effects of the Wageningen UR greenhouse horticulture project "Integrated Pest Management in Ethiopia” are evaluated, as well as the role of Wageningen UR in this transition. This IPM project contributed to a mature niche, which presumably will effect the regime in a more sustainable way of horticulture operations. Some recommendations can be made for future interventions by Wageningen UR Greenhouse Horticulture. The second case concerns the transition to (large-scale) urban agriculture in Detroit USA. The report closes with recommendations for Wageningen UR Greenhouse Horticulture regarding sustainable transition and with reflections on local, national and international scale levels and on the MLP framework as an instrument to analyze transitions