The impact of sensory characteristics on the willingness to pay for honey

Honey consumption in Russia has been actively growing in recent years due to the increasing interest in healthy and environment-friendly food products. However, it remains an open question which characteristics of honey are the most significant for consumers and, more importantly, from an economic point of view, for which of them consumers are willing to pay. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of sensory characteristics in assessing consumers' willingness to pay for honey and to determine which properties and characteristics "natural" honey should have to encourage repeated purchases by target consumers. The study involved a behavioral experiment that included a pre-test questionnaire, blind tasting of honey samples, an in-room test to assess perceived quality, and a closed auction using the Becker-DeGroote-Marschak method. As the result, it was revealed that the correspondence of the expected sensations to the actual taste, taste intensity, duration of the aftertaste and the sensations of tickling in the throat had a positive effect on both the perceived quality of the product and the willingness to pay for it, while perception of off-flavors or added sugar had a negative impact. Using factor analysis, we have combined 21 sensory characteristics of honey into eight components that were sufficient to obtain the flavor portrait of honey by Russian consumers.