The role of digital data for food cleaner production innovation and cleaner value proposition.

Food is essential for life but its production causes the overexploitation of natural resources. Customers’ awareness of sustainable food production is only poorly growing.

Still, the ecosystem is sending explicit signs requiring an urgent shift towards cleaner food production which also must capture the consumer’s preference because sustainable economic growth is not achievable without significant changes in firms and customers’ behaviour. Digital transformation is pivotal to cleaner production.

The most helpful for firms is to exploit the digital data generated by digital technologies about the use of natural resources during food production to reduce environmental impact.

Yet, we still lack a clear understanding of how food production firms are exploiting digital data to foster cleaner production innovations and shape the value proposition.

FooDization aims to explore how food firms employ digital data to innovate their production process and how cleaner production innovation influence value proposition.

An expected contribution is a theoretical framework which (1) will explain how digital data are employed by food firms to make cleaner production innovations; (2) will show how cleaner production innovation affects value proposition; (3) will display the indirect relationship(s) between digital transformation and value proposition.

In doing so, FooDization will lead to a new concept, the cleaner value proposition that is defined as an ecological value – created by the exploitation of production digital data – that firms promise to deliver to customers if they buy their cleaner-innovated-products.

FooDization’s managerial guidelines might help food firms recognise how cleaner value proposition better attracts new conscious customers.

In the food sector, this could help firms achieve competitive advantage by improving not only food production efficiency in the use of natural resources but also create a more sustainable and appealing value proposition for customers.