Focus on the country level - promoting country-level results and outcomes by supporting nationally-defined priorities, processes and accountability mechanisms.
Focus on the research needs for the future In general, research on fruit, including on consumers’ behaviour and expectations and on food habits, on technical as well as on sensory aspects are needed. This research must provide data to strengthen the competiveness of the fruit sector, both at national as well regional levels. The majority of consumers have a positive attitude towards fruit consumption. They consider that eating fruit is a pleasure. Next to pleasure, health is another main motive for fruit consumption. The aspiration at a better health is, both in West Europe and the WBC, one of the main drivers for the consumers to eat fruits. Research to increase insight in consumer behaviours, attitudes, preferences and willingness to pay, based on socio demographic data, as important predictors of consumer behaviour, is needed for the policy makers and the industry stakeholders in order to define and implement adequate strategies for the commercialisation and consumption of the fruits. To align statistical data collection per country especially including home-grown production and consumption of fruits will give more information about the fruit intake per capita, the share of family orchard in yield, the production area, etc.
Focus on the research needs for the future Research about organic products and its market are needed at every stage of the supply chain. At the farm level shortages have been noticed which prevent farmers to convert into organic farming. Universities but also agricultural research institutes and even farmers themselves should tackle the following concrete research questions, as being the ones who know and deal with their local agro-system every day. What are farmers’ motivations and barriers to convert (or not to convert) into organic farming? What are the organizational, structural, societal (etc.) challenges? What are efficient ways of informing farmers? How to reduce transaction effort (information, teaching & training, quality control, marketing)? How to cooperate horizontally? What are the tendencies in production? What is the development of the WBC organic production? What species, varieties and breeds are needed for organic agriculture and husbandry in WBC? What adaption of agriculture techniques is necessary? For this topic research, supply chain analysis or SWOT analysis could be used but also production statistics (acreages, yields, herds, etc.) and research on species, varieties, breeds, techniques and technology. At the processing and distributing level, the point of view of experts, sector by sector and cross sector and SWOT analysis could be possible approaches to answer to the following research issues: How to link up to local production and to local distribution? How to reduce transaction costs in information uptake, innovation, supply, quality control and marketing? What information and innovation is needed? Which organizational structures are in favour of organic processing? How to link up to local production and processing? How to cooperate/ communicate vertically? At the consumption level, qualitative research on motivations and barriers towards organic food consumption should be reinforced and linked with quantitative research on attitudes and behaviour. There is a need to better understand the general consumption trends and the efficient ways for the information’s’ uptake by the consumers.
Focus on the research needs for the future There are some studies concerning traditional food products in Western Europe but few of them are about consumers’ perception and behaviour. Interesting results are available about consumers’ perception and traditional food but they focus on European countries. For Balkan countries, this study may therefore be considered as original, especially because it includes both qualitative and quantitative approaches. However the results are applied on fresh cow cheese and not on traditional food products in general (except qualitative results). This may highlight a specific behaviour towards cheese, so it will be interesting to conduct the survey on another category of product as meat for example. In addition, there are no real studies about foreign tourists’ perceptions of WBC traditional food products. Their export possibilities, which are currently quite limited, should be explored for the traditional food products sector development. Moreover, in the study, health concerns appeared towards traditional food products, especially for people who control their weight or those who have diseases. Future research to improve the nutritional content of traditional food products will be interesting, including firms, scientists and stakeholders. Innovation may be considered to adapt the offer to new lifestyles. It will be also interesting to study the place of traditional food in a healthy diet. Research more focused on economy of traditional food highlighting the benefits to protect by origin labels this traditional food in Balkan countries will be interesting to convince authorities to protect it according to a legal framework.
