Consumer preferences towards goat milk and goat milk products: a mini review

Abstract

This review article focuses on recent findings on consumer preferences regarding goat milk and its products. Consumer preferences are not a new occurrence that has enticed academics to perform countless studies. Unfortunately, most previous studies in Malaysia's community were not conducted from a social science perspective. Therefore, this study reviewed several past studies that investigated Malaysian consumer preferences for goat milk and its products. The review employed Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) approach. Research articles included in the review were obtained from major journal databases (i.e., Scopus, Science Direct, and Web of Science) which yielded twenty-six publications. Findings have formulated four main themes: socio-demographic perspective, goat milk preferences, barriers to goat milk consumption among the consumers, and the most consumer choice for goat milk and its product based on the thematic analyses. Moreover, the results found that most of the studies analysed health and nutritional benefits as the most important reasons for the potential consumption of goat milk. Furthermore, gender, age, and religion can influence different levels of acceptance towards goat milk. The study also revealed that price, lack of knowledge, taste, lack of availability, non-habit culture, and smell can influence consumers' consumption of goat milk and its products.