MARKETING OF TRADITIONAL-LOCAL PRODUCTS IN THE EXPERIENTIAL PERSPECTIVE: THE CASE OF THE TRUFFLE MARKET

The hypothesis underlying this paper is that the business of traditional-local requires a specific and suitable approach (experience logic), which needs to combine the conceptual tools of service marketing (Vargo and Lush, 2004 and 2008; Gronroos, 2011; Gronroos and Gummerus, 2014) with the experiential perspective (Schmitt, 1999; Pine and Gilmore, 1999). In line with an experiential perspective we suggest that the producers of traditional-local goods abandon the conservative strategy that rests upon the defense of traditional means of production, and embrace instead an experiential logic marketing approach. In this way manufacturers could offer an integrated portfolio, inclusive of both traditional agro-industrial articles and new experiential products, such as thematized events, carrying higher added value (Pencarelli and Forlani, 2002, 2006). From the methodological point of view, consistent with the purposes of exploration, we chose to use a qualitative approach and the case study (Yin, 2003). The case study Marini & Azzolini Truffles of Acqualagna (PU - Italy), is considered particularly remarkable (Yin, 2003). The company studied, contrary to the expectations, acts according to a good-based logic. It is not interested in the value co-created by and with the customer in places where the truffle experience originates (in restaurants and in the local area) and operates only residually in the business of culinary tourism. In this way, in our opinion, the company does not grasp the opportunity offered by the experiential logic approach to marketing, and it leaves it up to the other players in the sector to co-create value for customers by acting on the experiential, emotional, relational, and symbolic benefits to the end customer. Despite the limitations of the research related to the use of a single case study, the paper proposes a new conceptual model (experience logic) to observe and interpret the food and wine business as well as the businesses involved in the new post-modern consumption processes, in which there is a demand for a strong experiential content, authenticity, and low standardization of the offer.