Competitiveness of Lithuanian food industry: the marketing point of view
Author(s) | |
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Zemeckis, Romualdas | Lietuvos agrarinės ekonomikos institutas |
Kėdaitis, Vytautas | Vilniaus universitetas |
Date Issued |
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2007 |
The paper deals with the issue of the competitiveness of Lithuanian food industry, analyzed on the basis of a research project, initiated by the Ministry of Agriculture of the Republic of Lithuania in 2005 and carried out by the authors. The theoretical framework of the analysis is presented from the marketing point of view on competitiveness, basing the competitive advantage on the price, quality, brand and other market factors from the consumer's perspective. The analysis shows that domestic food producers are used to compete in terms of price and quality; however, other factors - brand, image, relationships, promotion and logistics - are equally important. For higher competitiveness, Lithuanian producers lack financial and capital investments and better relationship building. They consider high competition on foreign markets to be the major barrier. The majority of Lithuanian companies consider conditions on foreign markets to be very different from and more complex than the domestic ones. The basic recommendation on the increase of competitiveness focuses on foreign direct investment as well as better representation in international professional organizations.