Promoting Mountain Quality Food Products (MQFPs) – Analysing possibilities beyond labelling policy

The new orientation of the Common Agriculture Policy encourages producers to respond to market forces. In addition, the public expect producers to contribute to a living countryside. Based on this context, the purpose of the paper is to discuss what other marketing alternatives exist for the promotion of mountain quality food products beyond labelling. This is done through the analyses of shelves and postal surveys to retailers, carried out as part of the EU project EuroMARC, which included information for Austria, France, Norway, Romania, Slovenia and UK (Scotland). The analysis concentrates on two product promotion aspects: display and store-promotion, and communication of product attributes. The results indicate that even without labelling policy there is scope to improve the promotion of mountain quality food products.