Traceability technology: fruits and vegetables trader case study

Abstract

The food industry is centralized around one major element the consumer. The changing expectations of consumers drive the industry. The dominating advantage of purchase triggers such as price, taste and convenience during the past years started losing positions to such factors as health, safety and experience. These drivers of the consumer value equation are based on the overarching factor – transparency. In the case of the agri-food sector the consumer is not able to access transparent information about the product if end-to-end traceability across the supply chain is not available. Based on the case study example, it was defined that there is a need for technology that can bridge information flow in the chain and can potentially ensure traceability for end consumers. The pineapple supply chain was chosen as an example for this study in order to narrow down the scope. This study was based on a qualitative approach, with the usage of such data gathering techniques like desk research and semi-structured interviews. For the analysis of the data, such methods like content and narrow analysis were used. The result of the analysis showed that blockchain technology could be seen as a perspective tool for the traceability in the pineapple supply chain. Furtherly, based on the analysis of the internal processes in combination with outcomes of the technology expert interviews and desk research the technology integration concept was defined. It was concluded that even though blockchain can be seen as an effective solution for food chain traceability, there is still a need of the market research that should prove the hypothesis regarding the need to the traceability in the food industry.