Regional Images and the Promotion of Quality Products and Services in the Lagging Regions of the EU (RIPPLE)

Brian Revell

Agriculture in the LFAs faces many uncertainties following CAP reforms of 1992, the GATT agreement on world trade and further EU reforms which will become necessary to cope with difficulties in the beef and dairy markets as well as to modify market and structural policies to cope with the addition of new member states from Eastern Europe in the next millennium. While much research to date has concentrated on farm-diversification as a solution to declining farm household incomes, this has often been conducted without any analysis of the markets for products from diversified enterprises and the wider framework of local and regional economic activities and structures within which they would need to develop.

The RIPPLE project which is being funded by the EU under the FAIR programme more generally will aim to help public and private institutions to develop strategies, policies and structures to assist in the successful marketing and promotion of quality products and services in the lagging regions of the EU. Innovatively, it will work on regional imagery and marketing in relation to the relative success and failure of quality products and services, both of an agricultural and non-agricultural nature.

More specifically, the project will:

• measure the local and regional cost-effectiveness of current marketing strategies and promotional activities among small and medium enterprises, including farms, and assess the producers' perceptions of any existing regional image-marketing activities in relation to their products;
• explore consumers' perceptions and requirements in purchasing quality products from lagging regions and the social, psychological and economic motivators for their purchasing behaviour;
• examine the marketing environment and strategies and institutional structures initiated by local government or development agencies to improve the marketing of products from lagging regions and identify good practice with respect to regional promotion of quality products and threats to the image of these products from lagging regions;
• provide an overall evaluation of regional marketing initiatives and the quality products from farms in the lagging regions of the EU.

In particular, the project will help towards the development of models of regional images and marketing and criteria for assessing a priori the effectiveness of future policies and strategies to promote quality products. It will therefore enable individual farmers, farmer groups, small scale processors, local development agencies and local authorities to evaluate and develop more appropriate strategies for promoting their quality products on the basis of regional identity. The study will initially hope to focus on products such as organic foods, cheeses and rural tourism services.

The project commences March 1997 and will run for 27 months. It will be co-ordinated by the Dept of Geography, University of Coventry. Other partners are Dept. of Agricultural and Rural Economics, SAC Aberdeen, UK; Institute of Rural Studies, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK; Dept of Geography, University College Galway, Ireland; Rural Economy Research Centre and National Food Centre, Teagasc, Ireland; CEMEGREF, Clermont Ferrand and University of Caen, France; Dept. of Economics, University of Patras, Greece; Dept. of Geography, University of Valencia, Spain; and Institute for Rural Research and Training, Helsinki University, Finland.

For further details please contact:

p.leat@ab.sac.ac.uk j.brannigan@ab.sac.ac.uk

Dept. of Agricultural and Rural Economics
SAC Aberdeen
MacRobert Building
581 King St
Aberdeen AB24 5UD

tel +44 1224 711000 fax +44 1224 276012

Brian Revell Dept Agricultural and Rural Economics SAC Aberdeen

24th February 1997