The Wine-Growers Cooperative in question represents a significant example of how an organisation, which has acted promptly and with foresight in picking up "weak signals" from the market and the environment, can become an incentive for other businesses (private firms or cooperative) and also an important frame of reference even for local Institutions projects relating to the subject of "Quality". In order to describe this case, this paper is divided into three parts. The first part describes the history of the Wine-Growers Cooperative, its past decisions, its present size and the results achieved to date in terms of both production and market (the period considered runs approximately from its foundation after the war to the early Nineties). The second part describes the guidelines of the General Development Plan started up from 1992 in order to boost the Cooperatives activities with a view to meeting the challenges imposed by the changes in the market and the competition system. Mention is made of its strategies, short and long term aims, the constraints encountered and the resources needed. The third part describes the implementation of the Plan in greater detail, the operational programmes commenced, the individual actions aimed at the various targets (both "internal" and "external"), some results achieved in changing corporate philosophy, especially in terms of innovation (technological, organisational and managerial) and some problems which remain to be solved.
This paper is divided into three parts. The first part briefly reviews some recent contributions which investigate the concept of quality in the agricultural food industry, with particular reference to the component of quality which, to use a significant neologism, is called environment friendliness. On the basis of the previous considerations, with the addition of some more specific comments, the second part of the paper suggests a more complex, comprehensive concept of quality - specifically, a systemic or holistic concept which takes account of all the relationships between the agricultural food company and the other "actors" or "stakeholders" in the system, each of which is able to influence the intrinsic quality produced for better or worse. The third part endeavours to interpret all these relationships in terms of marketing, briefly indicating the most important issues emerging and some implications on the various aspects of the marketing mix. The interplay between company and market, company and territory, and company and institutions is briefly examined, and some comments made from the standpoint of quality. In conclusion, reference is also made to some of the specific professional skills emerging in the agricultural sector which will become ever more crucial and therefore represent an important differentiating factor in terms of competition for innovatory companies.