OECD

a population of 165 million and the world's ninth largest economy, Brazil offers a range of opportunities to Australian companies seeking new horizons. 'Doing Business in Brazil' introduces the Brazilian market, and provides information on a range of market-entry issues and sectors. It also presents the practical experiences of a small but innovative band of Australian SMEs already established in the market.

The pattern of world food consumption has changed in the last decades towards a greater demand for quality attributes. Recent crises of food safety, such as dioxin, “mad cow”, foot-and-mouth disease, have attracted the consumers' attention. However, the quality attributes are not only related to food safety, but also to the impact that production has on the environment and on social welfare. Despite the low per capita income in Brazil, a growing number of consumers have become concerned with these issues and are willing to pay price premiums for natural foods, which supposedly do not contain chemical products or other sources of contamination in addition to being produced in an environmentally friendly manner (Regmi et al, 2001; Unctad et al, 1999).

This article is organized in four parts: item 2 provides a brief analysis of the alternative aviculture agribusiness system, which presents the technical characteristics of the production of alternative chickens, and identifies, based on the available literature, the coordination problems of this system, showing the importance played by the brand name and by certification. Item 3 contains the main contribution of the work, presenting the methodology of the research conducted on consumers and the analysis of the results. Item 4 concludes the article