This paper tries to shed light on a key question for different foodstuffs: why are product differentiation strategies far from successful in some agri-food markets? Undoubtedly, understanding consumer behaviour in situations where product differentiation failures occur is essential to resolving this issue. To that end, we built a theoretical model to analyse the roles played by both consumer information and inferences made from informational stimuli, given their potential relevance to the differentiation process. We thus examined consumer knowledge structures and brand credence related to attitudes toward a particular foodstuff and a product alternative, as well as the actual consumption of the foodstuff. The theoretical model was tested by an empirical application, using variance-based structural equation modelling (SEM) with the partial least squares (PLS) algorithm. Results showed that attitudes to both products explained the relative consumption of the foodstuff under study. In addition, product knowledge influenced consumers’ attitude towards the foodstuff and its consumption, but not the attitude towards the product alternative. On the contrary, the higher the brand equity of the product alternative, the better the attitude towards it. In addition, this factor was shown to have an impact on the attitude towards and consumption of the foodstuff. Therefore, those variables are key to explaining consumer behaviour in such agri-food markets, where increasing consumers’ knowledge and creating consumer-based brand equity seem to be appropriate strategies to improve the differentiation process.

中文翻译：

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了解产品差异化失败：产品知识和品牌信誉在橄榄油市场中的作用

本文试图阐明不同食品的一个关键问题：为什么产品差异化战略在某些农产品市场上远未成功？毫无疑问，了解消费者在产品差异化失败的情况下的行为对于解决这个问题至关重要。为此，我们建立了一个理论模型来分析消费者信息和从信息刺激做出的推断所起的作用，因为它们与分化过程的潜在相关性。因此，我们检查了与对特定食品和产品替代品的态度以及食品的实际消费相关的消费者知识结构和品牌信任度。理论模型经过实证应用检验，使用基于方差的结构方程建模 (SEM) 和偏最小二乘 (PLS) 算法。结果表明，对这两种产品的态度解释了所研究食品的相对消费量。此外，产品知识影响消费者对食品及其消费的态度，但不影响对产品替代品的态度。相反，替代产品的品牌资产越高，对它的态度就越好。此外，该因素显示出对食品的态度和消费有影响。因此，这些变量是解释此类农产品市场中消费者行为的关键，在这些市场中，增加消费者的知识和创造基于消费者的品牌资产似乎是改善差异化过程的适当策略。