Web Marketing Strategies in Agro Food SMEs

In this chapter, the authors study agro food SMEs and especially SMEs in the wine sector, which combine several common characteristics, and they make a comparison between e-marketing strategies and e-commerce adoption in wine SMEs in two European countries: Italy and Greece. Taking into account the existing literature about the use of the Internet for wine marketing, this study identifies the online marketing strategies and the Website features used by the Greek and Italian wine producers.

Strategies for the Development of New Products in the Spanish Agri-Food Industry

The objective of this study is to identify the resources and strategies associated with the introduction of new products in the Spanish agri-food industry. The source of information used is the Encuesta sobre Estrategias Empresariales, ESEE (Survey of Business Strategies). From this survey, innovation inputs and outputs have been extracted for the years 2000-2008. The results show that the efforts made by firms to invest in capital goods, R&D, and ICTs produced positive results. Nevertheless, little use has been made of other innovation resources such as technological cooperation with other businesses and/or institutions in the Spanish agri-food industry, and greater efforts in this direction would improve its competitive position. Moreover, while SMEs have made important efforts in recent years to adopt ICTs, there still remains a big gap between them and large firms. The efforts being made could lead to improvements in competiveness due to the positive impact of ICTs on economic growth and on productivity.

Local Web-Based Networks in Rural Municipalities

An analysis of networks formed by the links originating from the local authorities’ Websites and then from the successor nodes was performed for 30 municipalities in Poland. This analysis accounted for all links contained on the given local authorities’ Websites, with the links being classified into global and national (like those towards the global www services or the national ministries), regional (pointing, generally, towards the entities from the same province), local (within the municipality in question or the neighbouring municipalities), and internal (i.e. referring to various elements of the same municipality’s Website). Of primary interest in the study were the regional and local links, which potentially form networks of relevance for local development. For these local and regional links originating from the municipality Websites, the respective Websites were, in turn, investigated. For these Websites, again, the local and regional links were analysed. Such networks of depth two were established for each municipality considered. The chapter shows the results of this empirical work and draws conclusions of a broader nature, related to the significance and role of Web-based networks in the economic and social sustainability of the respective communities, especially during a crisis. The hypothesis is that networks in general facilitate survival, sustainability, and development of local communities.

ICT and Regional Growth in Europe

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have been at the heart of economic changes for more than a decade. ICT producing sectors play an important role, notably by contributing to rapid technological progress and productivity growth. The existence of a widely accepted definition of the ICT sector is the first step towards making comparisons across time and countries possible. International comparisons are made more difficult by the lack of harmonization in the definitions of indicators. Accordingly, there is renewed interest in measuring productive efficiency to determine the degree of inefficiency (if any) and the sources of inefficiency, if it exists. This chapter provides a broad theoretical and empirical review regarding productive efficiency as well as its relationship to productivity enhancement, especially focusing on ICT and FDI investments, comprising two of the most important productivity enhancement means.

ICT

Agriculture is facing new challenges in rural and urban areas, and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) may play a significant role. In this chapter, there is a background description of the ICT sector in the interface of urban and rural communities within the framework of agriculture. It describes some case analyses focused in agronomy and social sciences. In agronomy, the focuses are environment, food production, and pollution. In socioeconomics, there is a brief identification of ICT applications such as the collaboration between the university and firms. Considering the heterogeneousness of the analysis, the future research directions include different methods of studies for ICT programs (house of quality, structural organization, and others).

A Social Survey on How the Economic Crisis Affects Peoples' Attitudes towards Environmental Subjects

This chapter presents a social survey regarding environmental subjects conducted in Greece. It is a well-known fact that Greece is suffering from an Economic Crisis. This crisis coincides with the time that Greece is supposed to take measures for Environmental Protection. During the last decade, the authors’ laboratory has been conducting social surveys regarding peoples’ attitudes towards the environmental issues and the application of Renewable Energy Sources (RES). The research described aims to represent the way peoples' attitudes and opinions towards environmental subjects and the use of RES are affected by the Economic Crisis and a rather dystopian future. How important are the environmental issues considered to be when people feel their everyday life is threatened? This subject is approached through a survey.

Environmental Sustainability Initiatives in the Agrifood Supply Chain

The aim of this study is to identify a wide range of environmentally sustainable initiatives in food supply chain operations and activities. Data for this pilot study were collected through a questionnaire survey. The questionnaire consisted of nine questions. The survey was distributed through email, both as an online link as well as an electronic document that could be returned via email or in hardcopy. A total of 214 UK-based companies involved in the Agrifood products distribution sector were contacted. A correlation analysis shows that company perceptions about factors affecting decisions for the implementation of sustainable practices shares a relationship with the company’s expectations when applying sustainable initiatives. Further research built on this preliminary study will lead to the development of a model that will enable adoption of sustainable measures based on a needs and strengths analysis of the companies.

Turning the Table(t)s?

Agriculture, one of the users and also the basis of major rural resources, has undergone a change in the last couple of decades: the industrial revolution made its mark in the early 20th century and then the information age began to shape agricultural production and the way farming is done today. This process presents an enormous challenge for the stakeholders in agriculture, especially for smallholder farmers and family farms that play a crucial role in the sustainable use of rural resources. The new information and communication tools and services are both an opportunity and a risk: the adaption of these innovations is a must in order to act in a globalised and standardised context and to manage even a small farm, but the adaptation process is slow, which hampers the chances of e-innovations in a rural context. This chapter examines the causes behind the changes in agriculture and concludes with the opportunity of widespread use of e-innovations.

Using E-Learning to Address the Educational Digital Divide in Remote Communities in the EU

Digital Divide may manifest itself in terms of educational opportunities, especially in remote or insular areas. REVIT, an e-inclusion project, proved that e-learning courses can be designed, developed, and implemented to address the needs as these are described by the trainees themselves in an economically feasible, pedagogically sound, and technologically advanced way. The educational outcome of the project is not a “techie” product threatening to alienate the intended audience. Rather, the medium becomes the message and in some cases the tool employed by the citizens of remote or insular areas to establish their own online communities. This is the value brought forward by the REVIT project.

Augmented Reality (AR) Applications in Agriculture

The new ICT technologies are not only quickly developing but they are also giving birth to newer ICT systems and tools. Using the Internet by means of mobile appliances increases the possibilities. The Internet network has a become essential communication tool in business processes recently. Nowadays the Internet-based applications are more and more successful in agriculture and different parts of the food industry. There are several application areas, such as extension services, precision agriculture, e-commerce, and information services, where the Internet is essential. While studying the use of Augmented Reality technology, it can be concluded that different types of services offer different possibilities. Mobile systems develop very dynamically both in regards to the speed of data transmission and services. New devices like tablets and new services like Cloud Computing, Augmented Reality, and Near Field Communication (NFC) have great potential in agriculture. Cloud Computing provides better resource management and effective cost control. Augmented Reality expands the control, and the NFC gives better personalized information exchange. However, the business assessment of these technologies must not be done only on the basis of the technology and taken out of its environment randomly, since the whole area is very complex. In this chapter, the authors show Augmented Reality and try to highlight the possibilities in agriculture.