The taste and preference for food items of urban consumers in India has changed rapidly in the last decade due to increase in income and change in lifestyle. A number of studies have indicated that urban consumers in India are shifting from low quality food grain to high quality food grain and are ready to pay a higher price for better quality of food grain. The state of Odisha, where rice is a major staple food item and where people consider rice as the major source of calorie intake, is the home to a number of traditional aromatic rice varieties (TARV). Past studies have indicated that consumers have a high demand for TARV. This has been investigated to find out consumer preference for attributes, ’willingness to pay’, consumption habits and buying behaviour of TARV. Content analysis and qualitative data analysis were made by the use of N-Vivo to uncover the latent dimensions of consumer preference for attributes, consumption pattern and perception about different characteristics of TARV. A survey questionnaire and choice experiment was developed and administered to the respondents after conducting qualitative analysis. A number ,. of statistical techniques such as mixed logit, ordered probit, multinomial logit and binary logit were employed to analyse the choice experiment and survey data. It was found that consumers’ ’willingness to pay’ for various attributes of TARV vary significantly though their preference for attributes are more or less found to be similar. Urban consumers’ willingness to pay for attributes ’very clean’, ’no chemicals’, ’clean’, ’very soft’, ’white colour’ and ’highly aromatic’ were found to be higher than other attributes. The knowledge of non-use of chemicals was found to have a significant impact upon urban consumers’ perception about different characteristics of TARV and they perceived TARV favourably. Urban consumers’ preference for mixed format of store over organized retail store for the purchase of TARV reveals that the lack of availability of a preferred variety at an organized retail store always compels them to patronize different formats of store though consumers in higher levels of education were found to be attracted towards organized retail store for the purchase of TARV. The increase or decrease in price of TARV was found to have no impact upon the increase or decrease in quantity of consumption. The policy implications of the research findings were discussed and suggestions for future research directions were proposed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:740777 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Mohanty, Suva Kanta |
| Publisher | University of Reading |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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