Assessing consumer-perceived food quality using conjoint analysis

Abstract

Quality is considered the most indispensable means to compete in the marketplace for all food companies. Apart from the objective quality concerning the physical – chemical – microbiological characteristics, which links to the concept of food security; the subjective quality concerning the quality as perceived by consumers is utmost important since it links to the concept of consumer demand [1].

This paper proposed a new methodology which aimed to assess the subjective quality as follows: (1) to examine whether consumers could perceive and/or understand the quality criteria used by experts to assess the product quality, and (2) in case consumers could do, to investigate whether these expert criteria related to the consumer-perceived quality.

This methodology is based on the traditional conjoint analysis combining with an add-on, the sorting task. Consumers are asked to sort 9 pictures of bananas, and then to rate the pictures according to their perception of the perceived quality presenting on the pictures. The methodology will be illustrated through a case study performed on Vietnamese consumers.

The results showed that: (1) consumers could perceive the experts’ quality criteria such as bruise, shape, and color; and (2) the consumer-perceived quality related to these expert quality criteria. In addition, the results also showed that bruise was the most important attribute affect consumer appreciation of quality.

For practical application, we expected that this methodology could provide useful information about the subjective quality for those researchers who want to improve the quality based on consumer demand.