How Can Consumer Science Help to Reduce the Risk of Market Failure? An Academician–Practitioner Approach in the Italian Olive Oil Industry

Fraud investigation in the extravirgin olive oil supply chain : Identification of vulnerable points and development of novel fraud detection methods

“…Furthermore, the level of competition across the EVOO supply chain is high, which in turn could trigger food fraud as mentioned by Manning (2016). This finding is also in agreement with the study of Santini et al (2018), who reported that growing competition has appeared in the EVOO sector. In this group of prime drivers and enablers, both opportunity and motivation related fraud factors are included, which is a toxic combination because it implies that there is a suitable target as well as a likely offender at hand.…”

“…When the participants were asked about the supplying and pricing of raw materials (Q12), the majority (82%) commented that the price of raw materials varied depending on the harvest quantity and quality of olive fruit, as well as the geographical origin. This is in agreement with Santini et al (2018), who reported that the average price of EVOO in Italy grew by 74% from 2011 to 2016. The Food Standards Agency (2016) also showed that the average price of EVOO increased by nearly 10% between December 2014 and June 2015 as olive harvests in Spain and Italy suffered due to a widespread infestation of the olive tree stock by the Xylella fastidiosa bacteria.…”

“…Furthermore, 96% of the respondents reported that there is a growing competition across the EVOO supply chain (Q30). This is in line with Santini et al (2018) who stated that the olive oil business is highly competitive in Italy due to internal (competition between companies: price difference and oil quality) and external (the international competition: new producing countries emerging) impacts. As such, small scale companies have no competitive pricing advantage compared to other companies.…”

“…As such, small scale companies have no competitive pricing advantage compared to other companies. Therefore, they must understand the typical features of their olive oil and establish a strong marketing strategy to promote them as unique and distinctive traits of the product to gain market share (Santini et al, 2018). These three factors are all associated with economic drivers, which supports the fact that the economically motivated adulteration is one of the major types of food fraud (Moore et al, 2012).…”

“…A similar level of vulnerability was found for spices previously . The prices of EVOO vary considerably, which may be due to the fact that EVOO is a seasonal product and the quality is affected by multiple factors, such as climate and harvesting (Food Standards Agency, 2016;IOC, 2018;Santini et al, 2018). In the past decade, the prices of EVOO surged frequently due to disease, drought and frost effecting olive trees in Italy and Spain (Butler, 2015;Macdonald, 2017;Terazono, 2019).…”