Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
among consumers. The value of Kendall's W is 0.11, which indicates that the level of agreement
among consumers in ranking the attributes is very low. A low level of agreement among
consumers is an indication of the heterogeneity of consumers' preferences for the attributes of
fresh fruits and vegetables.
Since consumers' preferences for the attributes of fruits and vegetables may be influenced by
their demographic traits and behaviors [37], demographic traits may be used, where hetero‐
geneity in consumers preferences exists, to segment consumers into groups based on their
demographic characteristics. The present study employed cluster analysis using the variables:
age, education and employment status to identify discrete groups of consumers based on their
preferences. The results indicate that there are three distinct groups of consumers: young
professionals, older-employed worker and oldest-unemployed. The results also showed that
there was a statistically significant difference among the groups in their preferences for the
freshness attribute of fruits and vegetables. Young professionals accorded a higher priority to
freshness than the other two groups (Table 9).
Clusters
Kruskal Wallis Test
Variables
Young
professional
Older
worker
Oldest-
unemployed
Chi-Square
Asymp. Sig
Nutrition Value
0.414
0.434
0.440
2.980
0.225
Hygiene
0.449
0.449
0.452
0.104
0.949
Taste
0.440
0.456
0.473
1.860
0.395
Affordable Price
0.395
0.413
0.436
1.909
0.385
Freshness
0.598
0.579
0.547
6.027
0.049
Table 9.
Consumer preferences for fresh fruits and vegetable attributes by clusters
Figure 5 shows consumers' perceptual map with attribute positioning derived from multidi‐
mensional scaling (MDS) analysis of consumers' preferences for the attributes of fresh fruits
and vegetables. In the MDS results, Kruskal's STRESS measure is 0.03863. A satisfactory
measure should be less than 0.05 for a two dimensional model [39]. R2=0.99404 shows that the
model's goodness-of-fit is perfect. The analysis indicates that consumers perceive freshness as
a distinct food attribute, which is quite separate from taste, hygiene, nutritional value and
affordable price. On the other hand, consumers do not seem to perceive hygiene and nutritional
value as distinct attributes, that is, consumers tend to accord the same level of priority to
hygiene and nutritional value. Similarly, consumers tend to accord the same level of priority
to taste and price.
