A Review of Approaches Used in Agro-food Quality Studies

It is clear that quality issues have become more central features of agro-food studies. The studies have been conducted in several disciplines with different approaches respectively. Four major approaches of agro-food quality were reviewed in this paper. Consumer interface approaches focus on the interface between the consumer and the manufacturer or seller of the agro-food product. These approaches seek to explain how consumers' perceptions and information environments influence the way that agro-food market works. Quality perception approaches were developed within the studies of marketing, consumer behavior, and applied psychology. The aim of these studies is to understand the process in which consumers perceive quality of agro-foods and then make decisions to purchase. Rural sociologists have given attention to the social process in which the quality of agro-food is constructed. In the discourse of rural development, the effects of quality certification on the agro-foods, whose special quality attributes are embedded in particular geographical contexts, have mainly been discussed.