Configuration Challenges for the “Made in Italy” Agrifood Industry
Published 2021-09-30
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Keywords
- Digital food strategy,
- Online product configurator,
- E-commerce,
- Online customer experience,
- Product personalization
- Mass customization ...More
How to Cite
Copyright (c) 2023 International Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Abstract
The paper presents the results of an exploratory investigation on the approaches to e-commerce strategies by firms in the agrifood sector, with a focus on Italian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The article tries to assess the fit between online sales configurators (OSCs) that enable product customization and the habits of Italian online buyers. The study elaborates the empirical results of two data collection efforts: (i) the first effort is to collect data on the food configurators’ capabilities deployed by a sample of 105 active OSCs and (ii) the second effort is to collect data on the characteristics of the e-commerce websites from a sample of 522 Italian SMEs. Matching the results of the two analyses with existing literature on Italian customers' requirements while shopping for food online, the study provides insights on the opportunities offered by mass-customization delivered via OSCs to food SMEs, especially in terms of customer experience (CE) innovation.
Article history: Received (January 31, 2021); Revised (May 21, 2021); Accepted (May 26, 2021); Published online (July 23, 2021)
