Exploring Consumer and Business Perceptions of the Use of Digital Technologies for Traceability

Digital transformation affects company competitiveness mainly in terms of innovation, efficiency, and cost reduction and affects global value chains in specialization, geographic scope, governance, and upgrading (Leão, da Silva, Strateg Change 30:421–441, 2021). In food, digital tools can improve competitive advantage by supporting companies in ensuring food quality and safety by addressing the main issues related to this topic: food fraud, food safety and recall, regulatory compliance, social issues, and consumer information (Burke, Food traceability. In: McEntire J, Kennedy A (eds) Food microbiology and food safety, Springer, Cham, 2019). However, many companies still struggle to respond adequately to digital transformation challenges by adopting new technology concepts as a trend and not a real company imperative, misallocating internal resources and capabilities around technology, and expecting good results (Kane et al, MIT Sloan Manage Rev Deloitte 57181:27, 2015). Moreover, studies on the impact of digitization on companies’ competitiveness are, for the time being, still at an early stage of development (Leão, da Silva, Strateg Change 30:421–441,2021), as are related impact assessment criteria (Lisienkova et al, A model for digital innovation assessment and selection. In: Beskopylny A, Shamtsyan M (eds) XIV international scientific conference “INTERAGROMASH 2021”. Lecture notes in networks and systems, vol 246. Springer, Cham). The objective of this research is to analyse the entire national olive supply chain to understand the level of application of digital technologies by leading companies in the sector and, through consumer research, to understand what consumers’ perceptions are regarding the use of digital technologies in traceability.