Reducing Information Asymmetry in the agri-food sector: towards a VSA Information Variety multi-sensory marketing approach

Despite being an essential resource, food lies at the heart of complex global challenges related to its management, resulting in major environmental, social, and economic issues that call for shared, transformational approaches towards sustainability (Hubeau et al., 2017). Although agri-food chains are becoming more and more sustainable and consumers more responsible and aware (Jahn et al., 2005; Alessandrini et al., 2024), not only does the traditional efficiency-based strategy in food production and sales continue to influence consumers’ decisions, but it also distances them from producers, resulting in an information asymmetry in the value chain (Minarelli et al., 2016). The problem of information asymmetry between producer and consumer is particularly felt in the agri-food context, where the products’ features, such as their origins, genetic variety, and cultivation techniques, represent variables that are hard to verify and not directly observable by the final consumer at the time of purchase (Akerlof, 1978; Hobbs, 2004; Hemmerling et al., 2016). In the case of local or traditional varieties – which often differ from standardized cultivars in taste, nutritional properties or ecological adaptation – the lack of transparent communication prevents consumers from appreciating the potential added value of the given product, which may lead them to consider it equivalent, if not even possibly qualitatively inferior, to more conventional ones (Tregear et al., 1998; Verbeke and Roosen, 2009). This dynamic generates a strong disincentive for the producer towards the conservation and valorization of biodiversity, since market demands do not adequately reward their efforts (Cleveland & Soleri, 2002). The agri-food companies’ urge to satisfy their economic needs leads, therefore, to a progressive erosion of biological diversity in favor of standardized varieties, more easily recognizable and marketable, but less sustainable in the long run (Kloppenburg, 2004; Bélanger & Pilling, 2019). Moreover, biodiversity is further reduced during the marketing process, through a flattening that is the upshot of short-term economic interests rather than long term value creation (Belletti et al., 2017). In the scenario just depicted, the valorization of a specific variety occurs not as an authentic recognition of its ecological and historical richness, but as a strategic operation aimed at building an image of the product which is functional to its positioning on the market (Tregear et al., 1998; Barham, 2003). The narrative of biodiversity is, therefore, reduced to a selective and simplified story, which ends up favoring the very few elements that are more easily communicated by producers and understood by consumers – such as a symbolic variety, a unique ingredient, a particular denomination – to the detriment of the variety present in the territory (Fonte & Papadopoulos, 2010). Therefore, not only do marketing operation fail to enhance the rich variety and value of goods and products, but they also often even end up distorting the consumer’s perception of the real value of biodiversity – which is treated as a resource to be capitalized rather than a common good to be protected (Hinrichs, 2003; Fonte, 2008). The declared intent to enhance the territory – through effective communication of the peculiar characteristics of the local variety – results in a paradoxically opposite result: only some species are, in fact, considered market-friendly, causing a progressive impoverishment of biodiversity as a whole (Bowen & De Master, 2011).