Product and process certification - Systems, regulations and internationalmarketing strategies

Asymmetries in information, where sellers have more information than buyers about product qualities, may prevent firms from supplying some goods and s ervices despite the fact that consumers are willing to pay adequately for t hem. The frequency and importance of such market failures is growing with t he increase in buyers' interest in unobservable qualities (attributes) of p roducts, including the nature of their production processes. Certification by credible third parties may reduce the frequency and mitigate consequence s of market failures. Certification creates a variety of challenges for bot h marketers and regulators. In this paper, we examine the emergence of alte rnative domestic and international regulatory regimes for certifying some q ualities of products and services. We explore the implications of these reg imes and country and product characteristics to the formulation of internat ional marketing strategies. We illustrate our findings through a case study of the forest products industry.