One characteristic of food and beverage products make them more complicated to be managed compared to other kind of products. They are considered, they are usually considered as experience product. What does it mean? In economics, there is a traditional way of distinguishing product in terms of experience product, search product, and credence product. What is the difference? Experience products and services are those products for which consumers find it difficult to get an impression of the quality before trying them. That is to say, without an experience. On the contrary, search products are those products for which consumers can get a feeling of their quality by searching for a specific kind of information. Credence products are those products that also after they've been bought and consumed, it's very difficult to assess their quality. And so it's a matter of credence. That's why they are called credence products. Most food and beverage products are experience products. That is to say, consumers find it difficult to have an idea of their quality before trying that, before consuming that. So, what is the effect of this experientiality feature on the management of this products? Well, there are two main effects. The most important ones. First of all, it is very important for consumers to try the product. So they trial is very important. From the company point of view, the company should be able to make and to let consumers try the product. On the other side, since the quality is difficult to understand before having bought and consumed a product, it means that the reputation of the actors working, operating in the market is very important. So let me give you an example. If you had to buy a washing machine, it's very easy, or it's relatively easier to have an idea of the quality of the washing machine. Why? Because there are some features which distinguish a better washing machine from a relatively worse washing machine. And these are technical characteristics. For example, for a washing machine can be the size, can be the water consumption, can be the price. And so if you search for information for this piece of information before going into the market, into the shop and buy the product, you can know the quality of the product. And so that's why they are search products. But what about a bottle of wine? What about a restaurant? It's difficult to understand the quality and to compare the quality of one wine to the other before trying it. And the same for the restaurant. How can you say if the restaurant will be better than the other before trying it? So what happens is that the reputation of the actors is very important. And the reason is that consumers and business customers, when they cannot rely on anticipated characteristics related to quality, they rely on the so-called quality clues. What does it mean. That they try to understand what is the importance of some features of the product which they perceive correlated to quality. One is example is the price. For many consumers the higher the price, the higher the quality. So I cannot assess the quality, but if I know that the product is More expensive than the other. I can presume, I can suppose that the quality of the more expensive product is higher than the quality of the less expensive product. This doesn't mean that it is true, but it is what consumers perceive. And consumers base all their decisions on what they perceive, so what they know. From their own point of view. So which are the typical quality clues which are relevant to the food and beverage business? So we said the price, we said. And then we said it is important the reputation of the actor. For example, the brand knowledge. The brand is very important, because to the brand consumer associate some characteristic which to them, mean quality. Or the reputation of the company making the product, so not only the brand under which the product is named, but the reputation of the main actor, which is the company making the product. Or the reputation and the image of the shop where the product is sold. So there are many different quality clues lead to the reputation. But on the other side, other quality clues can be due to, for example, our words. Award-winning products are considered better products than products which have no awards or have never won an award. All the reviews, by critics, by experts, by other consumers. So the point is that consumers try to anticipate the quality they can get from a product. Not from some technical characteristics, but from other characteristics which they correlate to the quality and these are called quality clues. So the final point here is that again many companies tend to overestimate the competence that consumers have related to products and services, food products and services and beverage also. So companies tend to overestimate the rate of expertise that consumers have. So they tend to think that many consumers are connoisseurs, but actually this is not the case. And to try to distinguish the consumers in terms of their expertise, we can use two very important concepts. The first is core familiarity, and the second is expertise. So what does familiarity mean? Familiarity is literally, is that the number of interactions that the consumers have with a product or with a service. Familiarity is different from expertise, expertise has to do with knowledge. So what do consumers know about the product? How deep is the knowledge? How broad is the knowledge? And there is a difference between familiarity and expertise. Most consumers are familiar with product and brands. That is to say that interact frequently, because they buy frequently the product, they buy frequently the brand. But actually there are many consumers who drink frequently wine, but their knowledge of wine is not so deep, it's not so broad and that distinguishing these consumers from expert consumers. Expert consumers are consumers who are characterized by expertise. That is to say, deep and broad knowledge of products and brands. So these consumers, for example when talking about wine, have the knowledge about the different areas where wines are made. Or they know the difference among wines according to their Apellation d'Origine, the denomination of origins. Or they're able to distinguish wines according to the grapes, according to the way the wine is made. So there are many different characteristics that make the knowledge of a wine for the consumers. But many consumers have relatively limited knowledge, so they are very familiar but they are not so expert. So this is important to understand for companies. Because if consumers, most consumers who are familiar, but they do not have a deep and broad knowledge. They try to rely on quality clues. For companies it is very important to know which are the quality clues. So which are the characteristics that consumers correlate to quality that can be influenced in order to make consumers aware of the quality of the product of all the brand?