Consumers’ perception, preferences and willingness to pay for safety and quality attributes of beef in some selected formal meat markets in the Kumasi Metropolis and Sunyani Municipality of Ghana
Loading...
Date
MAY, 2015
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
As Ghana makes transition into a developed economy, a greater percentage of the population is
demanding and eating high quality and safe food products. The demand surge for beef needs to
be met by increasing supply and an efficient supply-chain. Using a choice experimental data
collected from 400 beef consumers in the Kumasi Metropolis and Sunyani Municipality of
Ghana, this study examines consumers‟ perception, preference and willingness to pay for safety
and quality attributes of beef product in Ghana. Key attributes include hygienic condition of the
shopping environment, excellent and attractive packaging that minimizes contamination,
leanness and certification of beef products for safety and quality. Therefore, guaranteed food
safety information and attributes should emerge as a new index and basis for future trade in the
beef industry. Preference heterogeneity exists among consumers in Kumasi Metropolis and
Sunyani Municipality for verified animal health status, food safety inspection and certification
and nutritional label. Hence, it is important for beef investors, government and NGO‟s to
segment consumers into different classes when designing strategies to mitigate unsafe beef
production, marketing and consumption. Consumers were willing to pay high premium for
verified animal health stamp in both Kumasi and Sunyani compared to assured nutritional label,
food and drugs board food safety certification license. Consumers in Kumasi were willing to pay
more for assured nutritional label, food and drugs board food safety certification license
compared to Sunyani. Consumer preferences for food safety inspection and certification, and
nutritional label are explained by age, income and education in Sunyani Municipality whereas
preferences for verified animal health status, food safety inspection and certification, and
nutritional label are influenced by age, income, education and gender in Kumasi Metropolis.
Albeit the impact of gender and age are negative for verified animal health status and food safety
vi
certification license in both locations. Therefore, the use of selective demographic targeting to
maintain or build strong food safety and quality measures should be seen as a reality by policy
makers and investors in the beef industry. Minimizing microbial, chemical and physical food
contamination and incidents of unsafe food in Kumasi and Sunyani requires adoption of strict
certification and inspections starting from the health status of animals to be slaughtered to the
final product with proper labeling information for consumers, combined with strict sanitary
inspections at the shopping or selling place. Also, sensitization of women on food safety
practices, handling and violation of food safety is very essential in Kumasi and Sunyani. The
study reveals that, consumers‟ associate pasture-raised products with attributes important to
purchase decisions and all the consumers express their willingness to pay premiums, most of the
consumers were willing to pay 15% more for 1 kilogram pasture-raised beef products. The
empirical results indicate that apart from socioeconomic characteristics, consumer perceptions
and product attributes tend to influence consumers‟ willingness to pay a premium for pasture-raised beef products. Pasture-raised product differentiation is recommend as a feasible marketing
strategy and recommend premium pricing strategies and promotion based on verifiable health
and animal welfare benefits through labelling of products. The results suggest that Ghanaian
consumers‟ in general ranked hygienic condition of shopping environment, attractive packaging,
leanness, assured inspection/certification, tenderness, whitish steak colour and freshness
attributes as the seven most important attributes considered in purchasing beef products
respectively.
Description
A thesis submitted to the Department of Agricultural Economics,
Agribusiness and Extension, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science
and Technology
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Philosophy in Agricultural Economics.