The rural agro-industries (RA) are understood as a strategic option for farmers. However, there are several factors which impacts negatively on the success of those institutions, unities. Moreover, there are several types of these organizations. The study, aiming to meet the reality of RAs, seeks to quantify the influence of the economics, institutional and social factors in promoting their inclusion in the market as well as verifying whether this influence occurs differently to each the type of RA. As theoretical basis, we have used the following theories: Neoclassical Economic and Industrial Organization, New Institutional Economics, Economic Sociology. The research covers the small and the mid-sized rural agro-industries, and the sample involved 40 agro-industries. A structured interview was conducted to collect the data. Through a regression model, we have attempted to quantify the influence of each dimension, and the results show that the economic and institutional dimensions have similar influences to the insertion of RAs in the market and are approximately two times more influential than the social dimension, when regarding all the RAs of the sample. When the sample is stratified by RAs types, the conclusion is that there are different influences of the dimensions of the study for different types of RAs.
small agro-industry; insertion in the market; economic factors; institutional factors; social factors
