Giovanni Galizzi and Luciano Venturini The food industry has been characterized by several and profound changes in its structure and competitive environment in the last decades. Although it is not a research-oriented industry, there is no arguing that technological change and particularly product innovations are crucial determinants of ftrms' performance and In recent years food manufacturers have accelerated the consumers' welfare. development of new products, by using new ingredients, processing and packaging techniques. Thus, food markets are increasingly characterized by competitive environments where relevant flows of innovative products, quality improvements and new technologies provide new consumption trends, food habits, market opportunities and ftrms' strategies. However, the issue of product innovation in the food industries has been rather neglected by economists. Few works have explicitly addressed this issue. After the pioneering book of Buzzell and Nourse (1967), one can count few contributes. Connor (1981) examined the empirical determinants of new food products introductions. Padberg and Westgren (1979) provided crucial insights about the nature of food innovation through their notions of consumer inertia, technological redundancy and incremental product innovation. Some case-studies provide useful empirical materials, but they are generally sparse.

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I: The Determinants of Innovation.- 1. Innovation and Consumers' Choice.- 2. Demand-side Constraints on the Introduction of New Food Technologies: the Case of Food Irradiation.- 3. Price and Non-Price Competition and Market Structure in the Single European Market.- 4. Concentration Change and Countervailing Power in the U.S. Food Manufacturing Industries.- 5. Building Partnerships and Alliances in the European Food Industry.- 6. Innovation and Vertical Competition in the Food System.- 7. Product Innovation in the Food Industry: Nature, Characteristics and Determinants.- II: Firm's Organization and Performance.- 8. Product and Process Innovation Management in the Dutch Agro-Food Industry: Some Empirical Results.- 9. Marketing Organization, Innovation and Agricultural Cooperatives.- 10. Internationalization and Competition in the Food Industry.- 11. Technological Change and Concentration of Firms: An Empirical Application to the Food Industry of Lombardy.- 12. Industrial Standards as Driving Forces of Corporate Innovation and Internationalization.- 13. Acquisitions, Agreements and Innovation in the Italian Food Industry.- 14. Economics of Vertical Market Competition.- III: Case-Studies.- 15. Product Development and Conduct in a Competitive Food Market: The Case of the Greek Sausage Industry.- 16. Competitive Position of Dairy Products in the Food Industry.- 17. Biotechnology and Vertical Integration in the Dutch Potato Chain.- 18. Evolution of Consumers' Preferences and Innovation: The Case of Italian Foods with Denominations of Origin.- 19. An Innovation in the Italian Milk Filiére: The Case of High Quality Liquid Milk.- 20. Combined Roles of Process and Product Innovations in the Food Industries.- 21. Technical and Organisational Innovations in the Food System:the Case of Fresh Products in France.- 22. The Role of Process and Product Innovation in the Reorganisation of the Principal Beef Slaughtering Firms in Italy.- 23. Invention Patents in Italian Agro-food Industry: Analysis of the Period 19671990.