Delving Deeper into Market Concentration of Poultry Feed and the Driving Factors for Brand Switching: Evidence from Commercial Egg Producers in Nigeria

Abstract

An increase in the price of branded feed has been a major problem for the poultry subsector of Nigerian agriculture, and brand switching for a cheap feed at the expense of quality is a common strategy used by egg-producing farmers. Using descriptive statistics, the Markov chain model and the logistic regression model, our study shows that almost 96% of the egg producers use branded feed while 43.1% switched feed brands because of the increase in the price of their preferred brands. Most farmers used Chikun (39.3%) and Top feed (23.2%) six months before data collection and during data collection, respectively. Our study found that approximately 37% of the feed sellers sold at least 10–50 bags per day. We revealed great inequality regarding market concentration: 50% of the feed sellers accounted for 89.5% of the total bags of feed sold per day. Hybrid had the highest customer loyalty. The study shows that Chikun gained 23.7% and 7.1% from Hybrid and Top feed, respectively, while Hybrid gained 36.0% and 35.7% from Chikun and Top feed (change in loyalty by egg producers), respectively. Membership of an association, distance to feed sellers, flock size and the average price of feed per bag were factors that influenced brand switching of poultry feed among egg producers. The study recommends that the government assists in subsidizing the price of critical ingredients (maize and soya bean) in feed production to prevent the price of eggs (the cheap source of protein) from becoming out of reach for most Nigerians.

Contributors of Brand Switching: The Mediating Role of Brand Image and Customer Satisfaction

“…In addition, our study also adds to the literature on the topic of fast moving consumer goods (Naim, 2022). Furthermore, the findings of this paper complement studies on the variables of product quality (Abdelwahab et al, 2022;Wong et al, 2022;Sowunmi et al, 2022) as well as research papers on the subject of the Brand image as a mediator (Saraswati et al, 2022;Helmi et al, 2022).…”

“…Recently, studies have been conducted on the mediating role of the brand image between product quality and brand switching. (Abdelwahab et al, 2022;Wang et al, 2022;Sowunmi et al, 2022). Various credible research papers have also explored brand image as a mediator in this context (Saraswati et al, 2022;Helmi et al, 2022).…”

Real-time soil monitoring and irrigation system for taro yam cultivation

“…In 2018, the global population surpassed 7.6 billion and is expected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050, with a projected increased food demand of 59-102% [5], [6]. If such projections are accurate, agricultural productivity must be expanded by approximately 60-70% to feed the world's population in 2050 [7], [8]. Hence, a sophisticated and efficient system is needed to increase crop yields to meet the global food demand.…”

Sustainable Development Agricultural Economics and Policy: Intensification versus Diversification

“…Despite the promise of maintaining the diversity of small shareholders in the developing world, challenges remain. Expanding chicken production by small shareholders in Nigeria is limited by the high costs of purchased poultry feed making it challenging to produce eggs cheaply without government subsidies [24]. This suggests encouraging more local concentrated feed production for livestock [1].…”