Abstract
In response to the growing interest for social and environmental concerns, the public authorities develop and manage quality signals to identify in the market the responsible practices, especially for the agribusiness sector. The objective of this thesis is to understand the influence of official quality signs on the market performance of agrifood products. We consider the official quality signs as resources for the firms, and identify and measure the marketing productivity of organic label and Label Rouge with three empirical studies. Several contributions emerged from this work. First, a theoretical contribution with a reflection about the linearity of marketing productivity mean-end chain, and the importance of studying consistency among quality signals to assess their performance. Second, from a methodological point, the use of methods rarely used in management bring another perception on performance. Third, the studies reveals disparate results according to the type of product. We highlight the lack of significant influence of official quality signs to create value through the price, and the incapacity of perceived value to transform quality signals into monetary value. Nevertheless, we observe an increase in sales volumes depending on the quality of the products. Finally, the nomenclatures signaling all the production process, perceived as responsible or not, have a stronger influence on economic results than official quality signs. In that respect, we discuss the interest of public policy and market regulations.