Abstract
Recent approaches about food quality have stressed the social processes by which “quality conventions” prevailing on the market are achieved. The present work investigates these conventions on the supply side, focusing on the “styles” characterizing the management of a group of firms. More specifically, the research analyzes a group of oil-press plants localized in Molise, an Italian region the name of which is also the “brand-name” of a PDO recently registered by EU. In the first part the essay outlines the scenario of both olive oil market and local context. In the second section the paper shows the results of a direct survey. Applying factorial analysis to the data collected in the survey, four main “quality factors” were identified: safety and health; localization and scale; product differentiation; technological heritage. On the basis of these factors it was possible to point out three main styles characterizing the sample firms: the “endogenous”, the local, and the “fordistic” one.