No abstract

Access to healthy food and the introduction of sustainable nutrition practices are two important issues today. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought new challenges to food security but it has also provided opportunities for local food production. The discussion on local food has been gaining attention in recent years, but there is still a lack of clear understanding of the term ‘local food’ in the literature. The relationship between local food and sustainability issues is still unclear and has various connotations. This discordance leads to further discussions on whether buying local food should be considered a sustainable behavior and whether consumer preference for local food can be perceived as a sustainable practice. A scoping literature review was conducted in order to fill this gap and to shed light on the main tendencies of the scientific literature regarding this topic. The outcomes of the research revealed three dimensions of ‘local food’ definitions in the literature: geographical, geopolitical, and organic; while the problem of a unified local food definition remains open. The studied literature did not show any sound evidence for sustainability attributes in the definition of local food and consumer perception of local food.

Social isolation during the pandemic contributed to the transition of educational processes to e-learning. A short-term e-marketing education program for a variety of students was introduced in May 2020 and is taught entirely online. A survey was conducted regularly in the last week of training using Google Forms, and three cohorts were surveyed in July, September, and December 2020. A high level of satisfaction indicates an interest in the content and a positive assessment of the level of comfort of an organization adapted to the needs of students; this positive result contrasted with the negative opinion of the remote learning in Russia since March 2020, and this surprising satisfaction of students has motivated the study to try to explain its reasons. This result was compared with the short-term course taught through the educational pedagogical platform of a university. The students of traditional short- and long-term university programs were asked to assess their satisfaction with different digital communication tools used for e-learning. They showed low satisfaction with the pedagogical platform and a positive reaction to the e-communication tools (messengers, social media, short surveys, video conferences, etc.). The qualitative responses helped to better understand the real problems of the cognitive process and the triple structure of intellectual production during e-learning, including interest in the intellectual outcome, the need for emotional and motivational elements of cooperation and competition between students, and smooth behavioral enrichment, which requires special efforts from students and their leading from teachers. The main conclusion concerns a practical decision to continue the implementation of the educational program in the form of an online course with the use of the mixed digital communication tools of social media, messengers, and video conferences, which most likely meets the expectations and capabilities of students.

The paper is part of a broader research project studying consumer’s attitude towards “Made in Italy” products through empirical investigation. The research questions addressed are: 1) Does recognition in terms of the qualitative characterization of “Made in Italy” products exist? And if so, 2) are people willing to pay, in quantitative terms, a premium price for such products? From a theoretical standpoint, the research seeks to fill a gap in the literature, since studies combining the “made in” characteristic with measured “willingness to pay” are neither conventional nor numerous. The specific purpose of this contribution is to analyze the relationship between the purchase of “Made in Italy” products, recognition of the quality and willingness to pay a premium price on the part of Italian consumers, reporting the results of an empirical research. The survey involved a total of 315 Italian consumers while three commodity sectors were analysed: food, fashion and mechanical automation. The results confirm that there is a propensity to purchase “Made in Italy” products which does not seem to be a matter of irrational consumer behaviour. “Made in Italy” is confirmed as a conceptual category consolidated in the minds of consumers, since there is clear recognition of these products in terms of qualitative characterization. These and other results of the research (which need to be confirmed and extended with further empirical investigations) should prove relevant both to the literature and as indications for public policies and the strategies of companies operating in the sectors examined. For the literature this research can be useful because there is no complete overview of quantitative data on the premium price. It can also serve for public policies because quantification of the premium price can influence the choices and strategies of companies. This study shows a significant willingness to pay a premium price for the three sectors analyzed, although the premium price is not homogeneous: while the measures range mostly between 10 and 30%, higher values appear for products in the food sector.