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Purpose In Europe fresh-cut fruit and vegetables, is one of the major growing segments in agro-food sector. Current literature reports a limited number of studies about consumers’ preferences towards these products. In particular, it lacks of studies focussed on fresh-cut salads and based on market data. In this paper, a study on consumer preferences towards the main attributes of Italian fresh-cut salads is proposed. More specifically the investigation is focussed on attributes assessable by consumers before purchase such as assortment, tenderness, product preparation and vegetable variety together with brand, size and type of packaging, presence of organic certification, promotion and product price. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate how much Italian consumers pay for those attributes with the aim to understand how much profitable could be different strategies in the sector. Design/methodology/approach The analysis is based on IRI-Infoscan scanner data, consisting of 881 fresh-cut products. The impact of each attributes on pricing is measured by means of a hedonic price model. Findings Main results show that, in Italy, fresh-cut salad price is greatly affected by tenderness, product preparation, assortment, brand, presence of organic certification, packaging attributes and vegetable variety. Practical implications Findings offer to producers the possibility to set up products by composing the mix of attributes that gives back the highest price. In addition, they provide some insights to define manufacturer’s strategies. Originality/value This paper represents a novelty in economic literature because it can be considered an example of consumer preferences analysis towards the different attributes of fresh-cut vegetables based on real market data.

A ready meal based on precooked gluten-free pasta with a yogurt-based sauce enriched with probiotic bacteria was developed and optimized from both the nutritional and sensory point of view. Conceptually, the work aims at understanding the innovation stress in consumers and check whether the "perfect beauty" of a complex food product innovation, which is extremely admirable from a food technology point of view, could be effectively appreciated by consumers. In other words, we are interested in knowing whether there exists a gap between science-based or "innovation-leading" technologists' food preferences and consumers' preferences, which are taste, information, price and promotion driven. Practical ApplicationsThe increasing basic awareness of the metabolic and physiological action of functional compounds, that bring better health benefits than conventional products when added to foods, is the driving force of this sector. Many companies have invested in development, production and marketing of nutraceuticals since they recognize the opportunity and urgency of aiming towards strengthening the tendency for innovation as a vehicle for the completion and/or consolidation of the process of internationalization. The current work could contribute the give answer to the need to develop processes focused on optimisation of nutrition and improvement of eating habits.

In this work, Combination of Uniform and shifted Binomial random variables (CUB) models were used to understand the role played by liking/disliking toward the sensory meat characteristics and the uncertainty of the respondents. The detection of significant similarities and differences among sensory evaluations was proposed by comparing the parameters estimated by CUB models with the aid of multidimensional scaling (MDS). The MDS approach was also proposed to confirm the presence of the two latent variables -feeling and uncertaintyestimated by CUB models. In particular, the sensory characteristics of a conventional hamburger and a new one produced from dairy cattle at the end of their milk production, properly mixed with chicken and turkey meat were evaluated and compared. This approach resulted useful to understand which hamburger was preferred and why. In particular, the results showed a good level of acceptance for both hamburgers, with a slight preference toward the new product in terms of feeling and uncertainty. The outcomes of the analysis also provided indications to meat producers oriented to exploiting dairy cattle for slaughter and could give suggestions for bottom-up sustainable food policy implications. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONSIn this study, an integrated approach based on CUB models is proposed to evaluate and compare the sensory characteristics of a conventional hamburger and a new one produced from dairy cattle. The conclusions achieved suggested that this approach can be seen as a successful attempt to evaluate consumer acceptability toward a new food product. The results also confirm the importance of consumer-insight in the innovation process. In particular, the proposed approach allowed integrating the sensory evaluation with marketing processes and efficiently targeting product development activities. Finally, the experimental findings of the current study can be considered an opportunity to valorize livestock production and reduce the environmental impact.

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