Consumers’ Preferences for Quality and Safety Attributes of Milk Products in Niger: A Best-Worst Scaling Approach

Abstract

Abstract:The overall objective of this research was to determine consumers' preferences for quality and safety attributes of milk products using advances in the best-worst scaling approach. A list of 16 quality and safety attributes of milk products based on previous studies was compiled and used in this study. The balanced incomplete block design technique was used to build the questionnaire administered to respondents in the data collection. The multinomial mixed logit was employed to analyze the data. Results suggest that nutritive value, shelf life, availability, purity and safety are the most important attributes of milk product; while origin, fat content, food miles, packaging and handling convenience are the least importance attributes of milk products to consumers. The study concludes that demand for dairy products can be significantly stimulated in the study area when these most important attributes have been considered by producers, processors and marketers.