Consumer demand for local honey

Shang Wu, Jacob R. Fooks, Kent Messer () and Deborah Delaney

Applied Economics, 2015, vol. 47, issue 41, 4377-4394

Abstract: How to best target and attract niche market consumers is an important marketing problem for producers of specialty agricultural products. It is particularly an issue in the honey market where consumers increasingly face media messages regarding threats to honey bee health, honey adulteration and health benefits of locally produced honey. Using auction experiments, this research evaluates consumer behaviour related to informational messages about honey that is produced locally, domestically and internationally. Results from 115 adult consumers show that consumers' demand for honey varies significantly based on the geographic location of the honey's production, product packaging and the information they have about the product. Consumers demonstrate greater demand for locally produced honey, especially when provided information about negative aspects of internationally produced honey that include adulteration. This shows that such negative media attention on specialty products offers small producers an opportunity to increase profitability by marketing themselves as a specialized niche alternative.

Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2015.1030564 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:applec:v:47:y:2015:i:41:p:4377-4394

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEC20

DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2015.1030564

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().