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Abstract
Growing segments of world consumers seek better quality, healthiness and larger variety in their
food consumption (Verbeke, 2005; IDDBA, 2008). As part of this process, consumers’ attention
for place-of-origin (POO) attributes as part of the demand of agri-food products is increasing
(Grunert, 2005). The major dimension of POO attributes that have been studied in agricultural
economics and marketing literature since the 1960s is country-of-origin (Dichter, 1962; Schooler,
1965; Peterson and Jolibert, 1995; Verlegh and Steenkamp, 1999; Balabanis and
Diamantopoulos, 2004; Loureiro and Umberger, 2005; Ehmke et al., 2008) while in the last
decade region-of-origin attributes have been studied separately, in relation with consumers’
values for tradition and authenticity of agri-food products (Kuznesof et al., 1997; Tregear et al.,
1998; Van der Lans et al., 2001; Van Ittersum and Candel, 2001; Van Ittersum et al., 2001;
Scarpa et al., 2005).