Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
1.5
hy giene
1.0
.5
nutrition value
0.0
freshness
taste
-.5
price
-1.0
-3
-2
-1
0
1
2
More Freshness Less Freshness
Figure 5.
Perceptual mapping of consumers preferences for fresh fruit and vegetable attributes.
7.3. Conclusions
Consumers in making purchasing decisions pay more attention to freshness, taste and hygiene
attributes of fresh fruits and vegetables than they do price and nutritional value, when these
attributes are considered individually. However, multidimensional scaling shows that
consumers tend to associate taste and price when making purchasing decisions, which may
explain consumers' love for inexpensive tasty fast food, especially in the case of low income
consumers. These results indicate that consumers may not be using all the information
available in selecting which food to purchase based on the preference ratings. Therefore, the
need exists to educate consumers on the connection among the food attributes and their
relevance to healthy eating habits and a healthier lifestyle, particularly the nutritional value
attribute. Knowledge about the subgroups of consumers - young professionals, older-
employed and oldest-unemployed -provides a basis for farmers, especially farmers supplying
urban and suburban farmers' markets, to tailor their products based on the needs of these
groups of consumers, a strategy known as market segmentation. For example, the results
indicate that the priority or preference of young professionals is for freshness. Extension should
use this information to assist farmers to select and display their produce to promote freshness
in order to sell more to the higher income young professionals. In summary, these results
present extension with an opportunity to (1) assist farmers in marketing their produce in order
to meet the needs of specific groups of consumers and (2) in developing a holistic education
program, that teaches consumers to use information available on all the attributes: price, taste,
hygiene and nutritional value in making purchasing decisions.
In sum, studies have shown that organic farming delivers more environmental benefits, in
particular, it delivers more ecosystem services than conventional agriculture [41]. Additionâ
ally, contingent on the crop, soil and weather conditions, yield from organic agriculture is
equal to that from conventional systems [42]. In the context of a sustainable food production
system, organic agriculture goes further in meeting the condition of ecological feasibility (Fig
