Demand for Varied Fruit and Vegetable Colors

Marie Steele and Dave Weatherspoon ()

No 235912, 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

Abstract: The objective of this study is to assess the demand for fruit and vegetable (F&V) colors. Consumer preferences for F&V colors have yet to be examined though nutritional health benefits are associated with color and the USDA has promoted consumption based on the F&V color. Supermarket scanner receipt data from an independent supermarket in a primarily Hispanic neighborhood in the Midwest was collected from May 2014 through January 2015 and transformed into a panel dataset of customers’ two-week purchases. F&V were divided into four color classes: green, white, red/blue/purple, and yellow/orange. The Quadratic Almost Ideal Demand System adjusted to account for the large proportions of non-purchases and to control for additional explanatory variables was used for analysis. F&V weak separability was tested and failed; hence, eight color expenditure share equations (four for fruits and four for vegetables) were estimated within one model. Expenditures and prices significantly impact the demand for the F&V colors. Consumers are most price responsive to white F&V and most expenditure responsive to the red/blue/purple and yellow/orange F&V.

Keywords: Consumer/Household Economics; Demand and Price Analysis; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety; Health Economics and Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23
Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-mkt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/235912/files/AAEA%20Colors%20Updated%20.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaea16:235912

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.235912

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().