Territorial Product Associations in Greece: The Case of Olive Oil

The change in emphasis of European food policy toward legislative certification schemes has shifted the research agenda toward investigating the link between the concept of 'territory' and food product perceptions. However, a relatively neglected aspect of this literature is the exploratory qualitative work investigating consumer perceptions of 'symbolic' attributes within territorial products. More importantly, there is a dearth of equivalent research subjecting these exploratory findings to rigorous quantitative analysis. Accordingly, this paper addresses this weakness in the literature examining the perceptual inter-relationships between a broad range of intrinsic, extrinsic and symbolic cues by deriving underlying product dimensions. Consumer segments based on these product dimensions are derived and profiled using an array of socio-economic, lifestyle and product knowledge variables. Finally, marketing policy conclusions are drawn.