EU Consumers’ Perceptions of Fresh-cut Fruit and Vegetables Attributes: a Choice Experiment Model

Abstract

The fresh-cut sector is constantly evolving and innovating in order to enhance quality and safety of products, which attributes are generally valued by consumers. Quality and safety are multifaceted attributes because they arise from a wide set of methods/technologies, therefore the knowledge about consumers’ preferences for food technologies is still matter of debate. The present paper tests whether new fresh-cut fruit and vegetables (F&V) attributes influence consumers’ choices and preferences. At the same time, we are able to verify the influence of socio-demographic characteristics on consumers’ preferences. A Latent Class Multinomial Logit Model has been fitted for four different European countries: Greece, Italy, Spain and United Kingdom, in order to divide the consumers in different latent classes based on their choice and their characteristics. Fresh-cut F&V consumers for the four European countries, have a similar behavior in terms of preferences. We can divide the consumers in two different latent classes: the first made by consumers that do not appreciate any fresh-cut F&V attributes, and the second that include consumers that appreciate the several fresh-cut F&V attributes.