Exploring the mediating role of trust in food products with Protected Designation of Origin. The case of ´Jamón de Teruel´

Abstract

The growing concern about quality in food products has substantially increased the competitiveness of agro-food products that possess quality-system certifications compared to non-certificated products. This research focused on understanding how consumer trust is greater when agro-food products have a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO). In particular, we analyze whether the influence of consumers’ perceived quality of a PDO product has a direct effect on their perceived risk or whether this relationship is mediated by consumer trust, which can help us advance in the study of consumer behavior within the agro-food marketing discipline. Our findings obtained through the comparison of two models, the proposal and another rival, suggest that the initially proposed model present a better fit and explains the relationships better than the rival model, which highlights the essential role of consumer trust in explaining consumers’ perceived risk and their subsequent purchasing behavior. Consequently, managers should pay special attention to consumer trust because trust is the key mediating aspect which allows the incorporation of characteristics highly valued by consumers in food products like origin, tradition and production methods to reduce perceived risk.

Consumer Perception and Understanding of European Union Quality Schemes: A Systematic Literature Review

“…In line with previous studies, were identified consumers that consider that the food quality is not verified [25,26]. Thus, there are consumers that trust the meaning of these certifications and choose to buy a more traditional healthy food product [20,21,23,24,35,66].…”

“…Furthermore, these products are often associated with a clear delimited geographical area [19]. On the other hand, consumers from central and northern Europe tend to focus mainly on practical issues, such as convenience, health, or the ease and speed of purchasing food [24]. Some consumers consider PDO/PGI labels to be organic, while every second consumers are unsure whether PDO/PGI certified foods are produced without fertilizers and other chemicals [25,26].…”

Australian Consumers’ Preferences for Food Attributes: A Latent Profile Analysis

“…Consumers’ decision-making processes around food are complex, dynamic and multidimensional. Recent trends in consumer attitudes and behaviour include an increased focus on food safety and health, partly as a result of high-profile food crises and alarms, new information about diet and health as well as consumer concerns about the application of new technologies in the food sector [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]. In addition, traditional purchasing criteria such as price and taste continue to be important [ 6 , 7 , 8 ].…”

Desarrollo de metodologías metabolómicas no dirigidas basadas en cromatografía de líquidos de ultra alto rendimiento acoplado a espectometría de masas de alta resolución en el campo de seguridad alimentaria, sanidad y nutrición

“…In consequence, previous studies in gilthead sea bream clearly indicate that the inclusion of vegetable oils in fish feeds reduced the content of LC-PUFAs and increased that of C18 PUFAs in liver, adipose tissue and muscle fillets, with a selective incorporation of unsaturated FAs in polar lipids (Izquierdo et al, 2005;Benedito-Palos et al, 2010; to preserve and maintain the function of cell membrane surfaces. Especially for fat fish species, most of these changes in the flesh FA composition are highly predictable by means of a dummy regression model (Ballester-Lozano et al, 2014;2016). Less is known about the effects of diet composition on the FA composition of circulating lipids, although overall they also reflect the changes in diet composition (Laidlaw and Holub, 2003;Lemaitre et al, 2003) as it was herein the case of circulating PCs, lysoPCs and free FAs.…”

“…In last few years, research efforts have been directed towards the identification of PDO chemomarkers for premium food products, such as Extra Virgin Olive Oil , Saffron (Rubert, Lacina, Zachariasova, & Hajslova, 2016), Spanish 'Jamón de Teruel' (Fandos-Herrera, 2016) , Vinegars (Chinnici, Durán-Guerrero, & Riponi, 2015) , Wines or Brazilian coffee (Nagai, Santini Pigatto, & Lourenzani, 2016). In the field of coffee authentication, studies have been reported for variety discrimination (Montero-Vargas et al, 2013) as well as specialty processing like Asian palm civet coffee (Jumhawan et al, 2013) due to its high market prize and taste.…”