Product-country images and preference heterogeneity for Mediterranean food products: A discrete choice framework
✍ Scribed by Riccardo Scarpa; George Philippidis; Fiorenza Spalatro
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2005
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 258 KB
- Volume
- 21
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0742-4477
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✦ Synopsis
Despite the importance of region of origin ~ROO! as a quality indicator and EU recognition of territorial specificity in food products, there is still a dearth of work investigating the importance of regional ~both national and territorial! identity in consumer perceptions for specific food product categories+ Employing nationwide discrete choice data for Italy, we investigate the strength of the ROO attribute across three food product categories+ Moreover, in addition to treating taste heterogeneity as conditional on socioeconomic factors, we employ recent advances in discrete-choice modeling to test for unobserved heterogeneity in consumer preferences for domestic and territorial origin of production certification+ The results show evidence of home bias in preference across all three food products, while preference heterogeneity is exhibited for table grapes and oil, but not for oranges+ The analysis shows that unobserved heterogeneity, as represented by mixed logit models, appears to explain more of the observed choice variation than heterogeneity associated to socioeconomic characteristics+ @JEL classification: Q120,Q130, Q180#+