Consumers’ increasing need for safe and quality food has motivated this market research study. A customer satisfaction approach is followed to examine whether the quality of organic olive oil, the most important biological product that has recently entered the Greek food market, could affect consumers’ purchasing behavior. For this purpose a survey was conducted in the region of Thessaloniki, Greece. The implemented methodology is called MUlticriteria Satisfaction Analysis (MUSA) and takes into account that customers’ global satisfaction for organic olive oil depends on five criteria. The analysis showed that the average global satisfaction index was almost 78 percent. Health was considered to be the competitive advantage of organic olive oil. On the contrary, promotion and disposition seemed to be its greatest weaknesses. The price, along with the package, was also found to be significant. Finally, gives some recommendations for the continuing improvement of information and advertising, label information and image of the package, which are the weak characteristics of organic olive oil.

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Our main purpose here is to assess the viability of Greek companies that operate in the field of agricultural food-production and marketing. More specifically, we present the basic operational framework within which the agricultural organizations of co-operatives operate; we also examine the main features of the juice market. The analysis concerns the periods 1993-1998 (for the co-operatives) and 1994-1998 (for juice-producing firms), and is based upon the financial characteristics of 10 agricultural co-operative organizations and 2 investor-owned firms established and operating on the largest Greek island, Crete, and the 15 largest (in economic and financial terms) juice-producing companies in Greece. The assessment procedure includes data analysis techniques in combination with a multicriteria analysis method (the PROMETHEE II method). The analysis results in an overall ranking of the examined firms' performance. This indicates the strengths and weaknesses of the firms involved with regard to their financial behavior, thereby contributing to the identification of the imperfections of the examined firms. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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