Big data analytics tools for improving the decision-making process in agrifood supply chain

Introduzione: Nell'interesse di garantire una sicurezza alimentare a lungo termine di fronte a circostanze mutevoli, è necessario comprendere e considerare gli aspetti ambientali, sociali ed economici del processo di produzione. Inoltre, a causa della globalizzazione, sono stati sollevati i problemi delle lunghe filiere agroalimentari, l'asimmetria informativa, la contraffazione, la difficoltà di tracciare e rintracciare l'origine dei prodotti e le numerose questioni correlate quali il benessere dei consumatori e i costi sanitari. Le tecnologie emergenti guidano verso il raggiungimento di nuovi approcci socioeconomici in quanto consentono al governo e ai singoli produttori agricoli di raccogliere ed analizzare una quantità sempre crescente di dati ambientali, agronomici, logistici e danno la possibilità ai consumatori ed alle autorità di controllo della qualità di accedere a tutte le informazioni necessarie in breve tempo e facilmente. Obiettivo: L'oggetto della ricerca riguarda lo studio delle modalità di miglioramento del processo produttivo attraverso la riduzione dell'asimmetria informativa, rendendola disponibile alle parti interessate in un tempo ragionevole, analizzando i dati sui processi produttivi, considerando l'impatto ambientale della produzione in termini di ecologia, economia, sicurezza alimentare e qualità di cibo, costruendo delle opportunità per le parti interessate nel prendere decisioni informate, oltre che semplificare il controllo della qualità, della contraffazione e delle frodi. Pertanto, l'obiettivo di questo lavoro è quello di studiare le attuali catene di approvvigionamento, identificare le loro debolezze e necessità, analizzare le tecnologie emergenti, le loro caratteristiche e gli impatti sulle catene di approvvigionamento e fornire utili raccomandazioni all'industria, ai governi e ai policy maker.Introduction: In the interest of ensuring long-term food security and safety in the face of changing circumstances, it is interesting and necessary to understand and to take into consideration the environmental, social and economic aspects of food and beverage production in relation to the consumers’ demand. Besides, due to the globalization, the problems of long supply chains, information asymmetry, counterfeiting, difficulty for tracing and tracking back the origin of the products and numerous related issues have been raised such as consumers’ well-being and healthcare costs. Emerging technologies drive to achieve new socio-economic approaches as they enable government and individual agricultural producers to collect and analyze an ever-increasing amount of environmental, agronomic, logistic data, and they give the possibility to the consumers and quality control authorities to get access to all necessary information in a short notice and easily. Aim: The object of the research essentially concerns the study of the ways for improving the production process through reducing the information asymmetry, making it available for interested parties in a reasonable time, analyzing the data about production processes considering the environmental impact of production in terms of ecology, economy, food safety and food quality and build the opportunity for stakeholders to make informed decisions, as well as simplifying the control of the quality, counterfeiting and fraud. Therefore, the aim of this work is to study current supply chains, to identify their weaknesses and necessities, to investigate the emerging technologies, their characteristics and the impacts on supply chains, and to provide with the useful recommendations the industry, governments and policymakers

Investigating the role of business marketing techniques in sales process

Purpose. The main purpose of the research is to investigate the role of the marketing strategies and to verify if adopting a set of marketing strategies matching the company’s operation to can be a successful way to generate growth in sales and loyal customers for all sized businesses. Design/Method/Approach. This research consists of a systematic literature review of academic articles compatible with the marketing field topics. A hypothesis is designed based on a theoretical framework and two case studies are investigated. It is tested through applying examples of two renowned companies, Xerox and HubSpot, that adopted their preferred set of marketing techniques and gained higher profits and larger loyal customer segments. Findings. Based on collected data and its analysis, it can be said that following correctly selected marketing techniques can lead to increased sales and loyal consumers. Practical implications. Companies’ marketing policies about choosing marketing channels needs to carefully be monitored and updated in order to reach long-term successful effects. Originality/Value. The negotiation process between buyer and seller is strict, long-term and complex in business. Subsequently, selling the product is not sufficient if the buyers do not get offered good quality services to leave them pleased and consequently loyal in the long term. Thus, this research analyses the positive impact marketing techniques can have in the sales processes and in the customer loyalty.  Paper type – empirical

Ecosystem for Successful Agriculture. Collaborative Approach as a Driver for Agricultural Development

The development of agribusiness sector is given gradually increasing importance. This works aims at identifying the elements that create the successful ecosystem for agricultural development, their benefits and application in agri-food systems; additionally, to bring on a light of the role of agricultural policies in these processes. For this purpose, the authors have carried out an analysis of the concern related literature and present a preliminary theoretical framework/model as a tool for supporting local development and incorporate a successful effective ecosystem. The key implications of this paper include an increased attention to agricultural research, to the role of the collaboration between relevant stakeholders, as well as of the agriculture, which uses information technologies for the better utilization of natural resources, and what is the most important is, the role of agricultural policies

Distributed Ledger Technology for Agri-Food Supply Chain Management

Distributed Ledger Technology for Agri-Food Supply Chain Management In today's constantly transforming world, agriculture management, as almost all other fields, is becoming more complex, the supply chains are getting longer as there is a need of intermediaries, and also number of documents and their copies for all parties involved in the transactions are getting enormous. It is becoming difficult to understand the provenance of the product also. A numerous transparency and efficiency issues in agricultural supply chains ultimately put farmers and consumers at a disadvantage. So, traceability becomes the crucial factor in agri-food supply chain, that means the ability to trace and follow the history of final product forward or backward in the supply chain, to have an information on all stages of production process, warehousing, distribution and trade. Consequently, there is a need of the system that simplifies the processes, increase the efficiency of production process and reduce the risk of fraud and adulteration. DLTs (Distributed Ledger Technologies) and particularly BCT (Blockchain technology) is recognized as a significant tool to solve these problems and reduce the transaction costs as well. Thus, the aim of this paper is to look to different means and ways, how food problems can be solved by application of Blockchain technology in the agri-food supply chain. In order to reach the purpose of the paper, recent academic literature is reviewed. Despite being a hot topic and therefore the increasing interest by different public and private parties, the BCT continues to be far away from being well understood and there is no clear or fair scale to measure its capabilities and outcomes, or to understand how blockchain technology can be used to enhance agricultural and food systems with their different categories. Distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) have the capability to be used these systems to provide enhanced data integrity and security without the help of a third-party organization. They have the potential to advance the global food system by improving the trust, transparency and traceability, and consequently the efficiency of agri-food supply chain. So, Blockchain can benefit consumers with minimizing the food contamination risks, and giving them the ability to track accurately the source of the products. Indeed, Blockchain technology can create accurate fixed data that is locked in time, for all needs and purposes. On the other hand, implementation of Blockchain Technology in the field meets some difficulties. BCT hardly depends on the advances of computer sciences and commercial applications in the field as it uses merger of technologies such as cryptography, hash functions, distributed databases, consensus algorithms, and decentralized processing. In addition, application of BCT needs an internet connection which can still be a challenge in some developing countries, and it requires also the digital skills of the companies. In this regard, agri-food sector will deal with less challenges because of progresses in digitalization, already implemented and actively used ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) and BDA (Big Data Analysis) tools, etc. So, this sector has a great potential to attempt the capability of BCT. Keywords: Distributed Ledger Technology, Blockchain, Agri-food, supply chai

Linkage between moderate wins consumption and well-being: analysis of Italian consumers by regions over time

LINKAGE BETWEEN MODERATE WINE CONSUMPTION AND WELL-BEING: ANALYSIS OF ITALIAN CONSUMERS BY REGIONS OVER TIME Introduction: Italy has an old experience in wine production and consumption. Indeed, it is one of the most famous European and worldwide producer together with France and Spain. The country’s share on the world market is 20% and 33% on the European one (Romano & Natilli, 2009). As for wine consumption, it depends on different factors including geographical features (Villanueva et al., 2017). Wine characteristics, consumers’ preferences and consumption habits as well as wine culture vary territorially. The origin of the wine has a crucial importance for consumers’ decisions, sometimes they are willing even to travel for distanced areas with the aim to taste particular products of concrete wine producing regions (Antonazzo et al., 2015). Wine culture of the region somehow defines also consumers’ perception how the consumption of wine affects on their health and wellbeing. For instance, French policies advocate the restriction of wine consumption that indirectly influence on consumers’ perception of negative impact of wine on their health (Vecchio et al., 2017). However, firstly the importance has to be given to consumption frequency. Usually, heavy wine consumers decrease consumption in later years for health purposes (Stockley et al., 2017). Though, wine is a healthy product when it is consumed moderately; its impact on health depends on wine characteristics and attributes as well, whether it is red or white, variety of grapes and other variables (Artero et al., 2015). Aim: The purpose of this work is to investigate and prove the connection among wine consumption, health and well-being. We intend to analyze also how this link varies over time and territory on the example of Italian 21 regions, so to compare these regions in two different years, 2010 and 2017, based on different variables. Methodology: In order to meet the paper objectives, we analyze data of the Italian National Institute of Statistics – ISTAT (2018 a and b) that gathers the statistical surveys. The research is based on the following variables: (1) Moderate wine consumption; (2) Health composite index; (3) Social relationship composite index; (4) Subjective wellbeing composite index. We have used the cluster analysis and a set of statistical unsupervised methods for classifying the units into homogeneous groups. More precisely, we have used fuzzy clustering instead of classical method that does not allow units to belong to more clusters simultaneously. As for cluster validity, we decided to use different cluster validity methods to have different meters of comparison to evaluate our procedure. They are as follows: (1) Xie-Beni index – XBI (Xie & Beni, 1991); (2) the modified partition coefficient – MPC (Dave, 1996) and fuzzy silhouette index – FSIL (Campello and Hruschka, 2006). Results: With regard of the quantity of clusters, all three indices show the same result of three clusters as optimal solution. Nevertheless, they have different consistent of regions in 2010 and 2017 years (fig. 1 a and b). However, it is possible to make comparisons, taking into account for each year the link between the centroids describing the different clusters and the Italian values in the variables considered. In this way, we can characterize the 3 clusters: Cluster 1 as the one with the best values, Cluster 2 as the one with the worst values and Cluster 3 as the one with peculiar values compared to the national data, in both years considered. a – Year 2010 b – Year 2017 Figure 1 – Wine consumption, hedonism style and health: clusters composition; membership degrees; centroids. We can observe the so-called North-South gap, with the Northern and Central Regions with values higher than those of the Southern ones in all indicators (except in the Health composite index, in which the differences are less marked). The moderate wine consumption shows almost similar values in 2010 and 2017. Conclusion: In general, both the 2010 and 2017 analysis in all regions of the country confirm the existence of a relationship between moderate wine consumption and composite indicators of health, social relations and subjective wellbeing. Results showed North-South gap meaning the strong difference between the different areas of the country. In fact, northern and middle regions entered in a Cluster 1, described as having best values while in southern Italy the situation is worse than average of the country so they entered in second Cluster with the worst values. After cluster analysis. It is possible to conclude that the overall situation in the country is improved over time since Cluster 1 increased from 10 to 12 regions with Sardegna and Abruzzo in addition and Cluster 2 decreased from 8 to 5 regions from 2010 to 2017

The Impact of Blockchain Technology Adoption on Tourism Industry: A Systematic Literature Review

The current COVID-19 pandemic has led to the acceleration of the digitization process and to a shifting to Industry 4.0. Blockchain (BC) is one of the technologies that has been introduced worldwide in recent years. It has been beneficial for the tourism industry, in addition to many other sectors. This article investigates the advantages and disadvantages of BC adoption in the tourism industry, as well as the possible solutions to overcome the challenges. This paper conducts a systematic literature review (SLR) that consists of the operations for detecting, selecting, categorizing, and analyzing relevant articles on a specified subject. It is evident from the results that the majority of the academic works illustrate the benefits of BC implementation and explain its potential by providing diverse models of BC-based systems. However, since BC is a young technology, numerous challenges have appeared on the path to its full adoption in the tourism industry. Possible solutions are the achievement of a collaborative approach among the stakeholders, the deepening of academic research in the field, testing more models of BC-based systems, and the establishment of relevant policies. Consequently, the implications for the theory, practice, policy, and research of this work are significant

Blockchain-Based Wine Supply Chain for the Industry Advancement

The wine sector is one of the most ‘amazing’ and significant agri-food sectors worldwide since ancient times, considering revenue or employment as well as health aspects. This article aims to describe the impact of the implementation of blockchain technology (BCT) in the wine supply chain. After the literature review, the study is based on Agent Based Models (ABMs) and carried out by the GAMA program. Then, the model and simulation of BCT wine supply chain is designed. Finally, the paper compares traditional and BCT-based supply chains, and the advantages of the last one are evident. Blockchain is a useful tool to ensure a traceability system and to protect the production from any type of fraud and contamination