Traditional Food Vendor-Producer Innovation Capabilities

Luiza Ossowska, Dorota Janiszewska, Grzegorz Kwiatkowski (), Dariusz Kloskowski and Ove Oklevik
Additional contact information
Luiza Ossowska: Department of Economics, Koszalin University of Technology, 75-343 Koszalin, Poland
Dorota Janiszewska: Department of Economics, Koszalin University of Technology, 75-343 Koszalin, Poland
Grzegorz Kwiatkowski: Department of Economics, Koszalin University of Technology, 75-343 Koszalin, Poland
Dariusz Kloskowski: Department of Economics, Koszalin University of Technology, 75-343 Koszalin, Poland
Ove Oklevik: HVL Business School, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Røyrgata 6, 6856 Sogndal, Norway

Sustainability, 2024, vol. 16, issue 7, 1-17

Abstract: Nowadays, introducing innovations is treated as a necessity to ensure market survival. However, this may be difficult, especially for food entrepreneurs whose innovations are strongly connected with tradition. The main aim of this study was to assess the innovation abilities and potential of traditional food producers in the context of the classic dilemma of innovation-and-tradition interplay. The surveyed food producers were from five Polish voivodeships belonging to the European Culinary Heritage Network. The study conducted 70 semi-structured interviews. The respondents were divided into two groups: the innovative and non-innovative groups. The statistical significance of the differences between the two groups was tested using a two-independent-samples t test. A comparison revealed significantly different average results for the following variables: general managerial education, business duration, sources of knowledge about traditions, profits and earnings, and own product brand. For the remaining variables (employment, sales range, financial capital sources, business goals in total, and own business), no significant differences were found between the mean results. Both tested hypotheses were verified to be valid. The vendors-producers of traditional food in this study showed innovative abilities and untapped innovation potential.

Keywords: food festival; traditional food producer; food tradition; innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/7/2844/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/7/2844/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:16:y:2024:i:7:p:2844-:d:1366091

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().