Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 7 indicates the number of consumers by clusters. The data show that 47.7 percent of
consumers are “older-employed worker”, whereas 34.8 percent are “young professional”,
while 17.5 percent represent “oldest-unemployed”.
Clusters
Frequency
Percent
Cumulative Percent
Young professional
141
34.8
34.8
Older-employed worker
193
47.7
82.5
Oldest-unemployed
71
17.5
100.0
Total
405
100.0
Table 7.
Consumer distribution by clusters
Descriptive statistics for consumers' pair-wise comparisons of the attributes of fresh fruit and
vegetables obtained from the FPC model are presented in Table 8. The fresh fruit and vegetable
attributes are ranked from most to least preferable using the reported degree of the consumers'
preferences. The results show that the fresh fruit and vegetable attribute most preferred by
consumers is freshness with a preference rating of 0.579. Gao, et al. [37] reported a similar
pattern of preference in their study on consumer preferences for fresh citrus. Consumers prefer
the other food attributes in the following order: taste (0.452), hygiene (0.449), nutritional value
(0.428) and affordable price (0.411). In this sample, consumers seem to value freshness, taste
and hygiene over price and nutritional value. The Friedman test was used to see if there was
a difference in the rankings of the fresh fruit and vegetable attributes.
Standard
deviation
Attributes
Mean
Minimum
Maximum
Nutrition Value
0.428
0.122
0.024
0.929
Hygiene
0.449
0.142
0.049
1.000
Taste
0.452
0.128
0.049
0.868
Affordable Price
0.411
0.154
0.000
0.735
Freshness
0.579
0.159
0.150
1.000
Significant by Friedman test for p<0.01; Kendall's W=0.11
Table 8.
Descriptive statistics of consumer preferences towards fresh fruits and vegetable attributes
The Friedman test, which is significant (χ2=177.71; p<0.01), confirms that some attributes are
preferred over the others. Kendall's W test was used to measure the degree of agreement
