Consumer Awareness and Willingness to Pay for Dried Mangoes: Evidence from Punjab, Pakistan

Abstract

Dried fruits are a popular and convenient snack option for many consumers, providing a nutritious alternative to processed snacks. Thus, consumer demand for dried fruits has significantly increased worldwide due to increasing health consciousness and a growing interest in natural and organic food products. Though Pakistan is one of the world's largest producers of mangoes, dried mangoes are a relatively new product in the country’s markets. Hence, the study’s objective is to understand consumers' awareness and willingness to pay (WTP) for dried mangoes which is crucial for producers and marketers to target and capture the growing market effectively. We collected the data from 300 respondents from three metropolitan cities of Punjab: Lahore, Faisalabad, and Multan. We employed logistic regression to investigate the determinants of consumers’ awareness of dried mangoes and Tobit regression to estimate factors affecting willingness to pay. The results show that 46% of respondents knew the dried mangoes. Furthermore, gender, education, income, and access to information are the important factors affecting consumers’ awareness. On average, consumers were willing to pay Rs. 373/ 125 grams of dried mangoes. The estimates of the Tobit model show that gender, age, education, income, profession, promotion, packing, and health consciousness significantly affect the consumers’ willingness to pay. Therefore, producers and marketers must develop effective positioning, pricing, and promotional strategies based on these factors to target and capture the growing markets for dried fruits.