Factors Affecting Firm Competitiveness and Performance in the Modern Business World

Aspasia Vlachvei is Professor of Marketing, in Western Macedonia University of Apllied Sciences since 2002. Prior to that she has been employed in various capacities at the University of Macedonia, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, University of Thessaly and TEI of Thessaloniki, Greece. She has been Visiting Professor in Kiev National University of Taras Shev?henko, Ukraine. She holds a BA degree from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, MSc in «Rural Economics and Development» from Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Chania and a Ph.D degree on Agricultural Economics from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, since 1997. She has received scholarship (1994-97) from National Scholarship foundation. Her research interests focus on international marketing strategies, competitiveness, wine tourism and wine marketing, e-marketing, social media. She is director of MSc “Public relations and marketing with new technologies” and co-director of MBA of Western Macedonia University of Applied Sciences. She is co-editor of the proceedings and member of scientific and organising committe of International Conference on Applied Economics - ICOAE (2008-16). She has been guest Editor in Journal of International Trade Law and Policy, International Journal of Computational Economics and Econometrics, International Journal of Financial Economics and Econometrics . She has supervised numerous MBA theses in the area of international business strategies. She has participated in several European funded projects concerning food marketing and industrial organisation. She has published in several professional journals such as Applied Economics, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural Economics, British Food Journal, Journal of European Economy, Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics and New Medit .

Ourania Notta is Professor of Microeconomics at the Department of Agricultural Technology (Agricultural Economics Program), of the Alexander Technological Educational Institute of Thessaloniki in Greece. She received her Diploma in Agricultural Economics, her master in Economics and a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from the Department of Agricultural Economics of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She has teaching experience in Hellenic Open University and in MBA of Western Macedonia University of Applied Sciences. Her research interests focus on the economics of agribusiness; industrial economics; food firms’ strategies and entrepreneurial behaviour. She has participated in ten European and national funded research projects concerning industrial economics and agribusiness. She has participated in 30 international conferences and she has published many articles in international conferences’ proceedings published by well-known publishers such as Elsevier and Springer. She has authored many peer review papers in scientific journals such as American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Review of Industrial Organization, British Food Journal, South European Society and Politics, New Medit, International Journal of Computational Economics and Econometrics etc. Her publications have been cited in more than 150 papers by other authors, She is member of the European Association of Agricultural Economists (EAAE), the Greek association of Agricultural Economists and the Hellenic Association for Information and Communication Technologies in Agriculture Food and Environment (HAICTA).

Kostas Karantininis is Professor of Business Administration, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, since 2012. Previously Professor at the University of Copenhagen. He is guest faculty at Wageningen University The Netherlands; at MAICh, Greece and the University of Perugia, Italy. His research interests are in the economics of agribusiness and value chains in western and developing countries, and his fields of expertise are in applied microeconomics, industrial organization, Cooperatives, Policy and new institutional economics. He is currently involved in projects in Africa, Sweden, Greece, and the EU, on value chains, circular economy and capacity building. Recently he completed a report on Greek agriculture commissioned by Task Force Greece. He has supervised PHD and MSC students in Sweden, Denmark, Africa, and Eastern Europe. He is teaching courses on agribusiness, microeconomic theory and new institutional economics. He has organized and chaired several international conferences. He is the co-editor of a book on cooperatives and has published in the Journal of Econometrics, the American Journal of Agricultural Economics (AJAE), The European Review of Agricultural Economics (ERAE), and other professional Journals. He served as associate editor of the AJAE, the ERAE and JAFIO.

Nicholas Tsounis is a Professor of Economics at the Department of International Trade, Technological Institute of Western Macedonia and an adjunct faculty member at the Hellenic Open University-Greece. He has a PhD in International Trade Theory since 1992 from the Department of Economics, University of Manchester-UK. His research interests are on applied international economics, economic integration and applied microeconomics. He has published more than 40 articles in international scientific periodicals and conferences and 15 books. He is a referee/peer reviewer for several scientific periodicals and research calls of various countries, including the EU. He is the co-founder of the ICOAE conferences (with Aspasia Vlachvei) (www.i-coae.com) and an academic advisor to the Hellenic NARIC.