IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ags/jlofdr/145331.html

Understanding Markets for Grass-Fed Beef: Taste, Price, and Purchase Preferences

Author

Listed:
  • Gwin, Lauren
  • Durham, Catherine A.
  • Miller, Jason D.
  • Colonna, Ann

Abstract

We use results of a consumer taste test conducted in Portland, Oregon, and choice-based conjoint analysis to examine consumer attitudes about grass-fed beef compared to conventional grain-fed: taste preferences, willingness to pay, and willingness to buy frozen meat in bulk. We consider the effect of demographic, attitudinal, and shopping location characteristics of consumers. A baseline, uninformed consumer will pay $0.90-$0.94/pound more for grass-fed ground beef; knowledge about production and nutritional factors increases the premium. A majority of participants would buy in bulk if they knew a producer or a friend referred them; 72% will buy frozen beef.

Suggested Citation

  • Gwin, Lauren & Durham, Catherine A. & Miller, Jason D. & Colonna, Ann, 2012. "Understanding Markets for Grass-Fed Beef: Taste, Price, and Purchase Preferences," Journal of Food Distribution Research, Food Distribution Research Society, vol. 43(2), pages 1-21.
  • Handle: RePEc:ags:jlofdr:145331
    DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.145331
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/145331/files/JFDR%2043_2_%206%20Gwin.pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22004/ag.econ.145331?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. King, Robert P. & Hand, Michael S. & DiGiacomo, Gigi & Clancy, Kate & Gomez, Miguel I. & Hardesty, Shermain D. & Lev, Larry & McLaughlin, Edward W., 2010. "Comparing the Structure, Size, and Performance of Local and Mainstream Food Supply Chains," Economic Research Report 246989, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    2. Lusk, Jayson L. & Parker, Natalie, 2009. "Consumer Preferences for Amount and Type of Fat in Ground Beef," Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 41(1), pages 75-90, April.
    3. Wendy J. Umberger & Dawn D. Thilmany McFadden & Amanda R. Smith, 2009. "Does altruism play a role in determining U.S. consumer preferences and willingness to pay for natural and regionally produced beef?," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(2), pages 268-285.
    4. Conner, David S. & Oppenheim, Diana, 2008. "Demand for Pasture-Raised Livestock Products in Michigan: Results of Consumer Surveys and Experimental Auctions," Journal of Food Distribution Research, Food Distribution Research Society, vol. 39(01), March.
    5. Feuz, Dillon M. & Umberger, Wendy J. & Calkins, Chris R. & Sitz, Bethany M., 2004. "U.S. Consumers' Willingness to Pay for Flavor and Tenderness in Steaks as Determined with an Experimental Auction," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 29(3), pages 1-16, December.
    6. Feuz, Dillon M. & Umberger, Wendy J., "undated". "Consumer Willingness-to-Pay for Flavor in Beef Steaks: An Experimental Economics Approach," Cornhusker Economics 306200, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Department of Agricultural Economics.
    7. McCluskey, Jill J. & Wahl, Thomas I. & Li, Quan & Wandschneider, Philip R., 2005. "U.S. Grass-Fed Beef: Marketing Health Benefits," Journal of Food Distribution Research, Food Distribution Research Society, vol. 36(3), pages 1-8, November.
    8. Umberger, Wendy J. & Boxall, Peter C. & Lacy, R. Curt, 2009. "Role of credence and health information in determining US consumers’ willingness-to-pay for grass-finished beef," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 53(4), pages 1-21.
    9. Kelvin J. Lancaster, 1966. "A New Approach to Consumer Theory," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 74(2), pages 132-132.
    10. Jayson L. Lusk & Ted C. Schroeder, 2004. "Are Choice Experiments Incentive Compatible? A Test with Quality Differentiated Beef Steaks," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 86(2), pages 467-482.
    11. Conner, David S. & Oppenheim, Diana, 2008. "Demand for Pasture-Raised Livestock Products: Results from Michigan Retail Surveys," Journal of Agribusiness, Agricultural Economics Association of Georgia, vol. 26(01), pages 1-20.
    12. McCluskey, Jill J. & Durham, Catherine A. & Horn, Brady P., 2009. "Consumer Preferences for Socially Responsible Production Attributes Across Food Products," Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 38(3), pages 345-356, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Biancamaria Torquati & Tiziano Tempesta & Daniel Vecchiato & Sonia Venanzi, 2018. "Tasty or Sustainable? The Effect of Product Sensory Experience on a Sustainable New Food Product: An Application of Discrete Choice Experiments on Chianina Tinned Beef," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(8), pages 1-24, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Britwum, Kofi & Yiannaka, Amalia, 2019. "Consumer willingness to pay for food safety interventions: The role of message framing and issue involvement," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 1-1.
    2. Eve J. Froehlich & Jared G. Carlberg & Clement E. Ward, 2009. "Willingness‐to‐Pay for Fresh Brand Name Beef," Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie, Canadian Agricultural Economics Society/Societe canadienne d'agroeconomie, vol. 57(1), pages 119-137, March.
    3. Ryan Feuz & F. Bailey Norwood & Ranjith Ramanathan, 2020. "Do consumers have an appetite for discolored beef?," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 36(4), pages 631-652, October.
    4. Adalja, Aaron & Hanson, James & Towe, Charles & Tselepidakis, Elina, 2015. "An Examination of Consumer Willingness to Pay for Local Products," Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 44(3), pages 253-274, December.
    5. Evans, Jason R. & D'Souza, Gerard E. & Collins, Alan R. & Brown, Cheryl & Sperow, Mark, 2011. "Determining Consumer Perceptions of and Willingness to Pay for Appalachian Grass-Fed Beef: An Experimental Economics Approach," Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association, vol. 40(2), pages 1-18, August.
    6. Kar H. Lim & Wuyang Hu, 2016. "How Local Is Local? A Reflection on Canadian Local Food Labeling Policy from Consumer Preference," Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie, Canadian Agricultural Economics Society/Societe canadienne d'agroeconomie, vol. 64(1), pages 71-88, March.
    7. Gillespie, Jeffrey & Sitienei, Isaac & Bhandari, Basu & Scaglia, Guillermo, . "Grass-Fed Beef: How is it Marketed by US Producers?," International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, International Food and Agribusiness Management Association, vol. 19(2), pages 1-18.
    8. Ward, Clement E. & Lusk, Jayson L. & Dutton, Jennifer M., 2008. "Implicit Value of Retail Beef Product Attributes," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 33(3), pages 1-18.
    9. Shijun Gao & Carola Grebitus & Karen L. DeLong, 2024. "Explaining consumer willingness to pay for country‐of‐origin labeling with ethnocentrism, country image, and product image: Examples from China's beef market," Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie, Canadian Agricultural Economics Society/Societe canadienne d'agroeconomie, vol. 72(2), pages 149-166, June.
    10. Khan, Mohammed Tajuddin & Kishore, Avinash & Joshi, Pramod K., 2016. "Gender dimensions on farmers’ preferences for direct-seeded rice with drum seeder in India," IFPRI discussion papers 1550, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    11. Jianhua Wang & Jiaye Ge & Yuting Ma, 2018. "Urban Chinese Consumers’ Willingness to Pay for Pork with Certified Labels: A Discrete Choice Experiment," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(3), pages 1-14, February.
    12. Giacomo Pallante & Adam Drucker, 2014. "Niche Markets for Agrobiodiversity Conservation: Preference and Scale Heterogeneity Effects on Nepalese Consumers’ WTP for Finger Millet Products," SEEDS Working Papers 1414, SEEDS, Sustainability Environmental Economics and Dynamics Studies, revised May 2014.
    13. West, Grant H. & Snell, Heather & Kovacs, Kent & Nayga, Rodolfo M., 2020. "Estimation of the preferences for the intertemporal services from groundwater," 2020 Annual Meeting, July 26-28, Kansas City, Missouri 304220, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    14. Ping Qin & Fredrik Carlsson & Jintao Xu, 2011. "Forest Tenure Reform in China: A Choice Experiment on Farmers’ Property Rights Preferences," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 87(3), pages 473-487.
    15. Liu, Jianhui & Kassas, Bachir & Lai, John, 2023. "Investigating How Political Messaging Matters for Food in the United States," 2023 Annual Meeting, July 23-25, Washington D.C. 335511, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    16. Mohammed H. Alemu & Søren Bøye Olsen & Suzanne E. Vedel & John Kinyuru & Kennedy O. Pambo, 2016. "Integrating sensory evaluations in incentivized discrete choice experiments to assess consumer demand for cricket flour buns in Kenya," IFRO Working Paper 2016/02, University of Copenhagen, Department of Food and Resource Economics.
    17. Etumnu, Chinonso, 2016. "Behavioral Determinants of Biofortified Food Acceptance: The Case of Orange-fleshed Sweet Potato in Ghana," 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts 235249, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    18. Garavaglia, Christian & Mariani, Paolo, 2015. "How Much Do Consumers Value PDO Certifications? Estimates of WTP for PDO Dry-Cured Ham in Italy," 145th Seminar, April 14-15, 2015, Parma, Italy 200376, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    19. Djamel Rahmani & Zein Kallas & Maria Pappa & José Maria Gil, 2019. "Are Consumers’ Egg Preferences Influenced by Animal-Welfare Conditions and Environmental Impacts?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(22), pages 1-23, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ags:jlofdr:145331. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AgEcon Search (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fdrssea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.