Browsing by Subject "experimental auction"
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Item Measuring Consumer Acceptance and Willingness-To-Pay for Specialty Tomatoes: Impact of Product, Taste, and Health Features(2014-08-08) Segovia Coronel, Michelle SThe increasing public health awareness and the promotion given to healthy eating habits as a measure to prevent obesity and chronic diseases have pushed consumer?s attention towards differentiated products. Many of the differentiated products, such as those with environmental, local, and other health and quality claims, are categorized as credence goods. Credence attributes, such as nutritional characteristics, are unobserved by consumers even after consumption, making the use of information crucial for marketing the benefits of such products. While there have been numerous studies examining the potential impacts of these attributes on consumer demand, few studies combine consumer valuation of credence attributes with sensory analysis of products and information treatments. This study attempts to shed more light on this area by considering both the impact of various attributes on consumer demand and the consistency in consumer valuation under different information treatments. The information treatments refer to tasting, health information, and the location of origin and production system of the products. A non-hypothetical second-price Vickrey auction was conducted in the Bryan-College Station area of Texas in order to collect the data. Several econometric models were developed to estimate consumers? willingness-to-pay (WTP); however, special attention was paid to the random parameters tobit model as it accounts for unobserved individual heterogeneity as well as bid-censoring. Results show that knowledge of location of origin of tomatoes does have an impact on consumer valuation. The same holds true for the taste attribute (experience) and the health attribute (credence). Each information treatment was applied to several products and some treatments had contradictory results between products which prevented generalizing the effects of that treatment. In addition, estimates indicate there exists unobserved heterogeneity in valuations across individuals. Finally, using a Latent Class Analysis, consumers were segmented based on health-related behaviors, and the differences in the valuation of products and information treatments among those classes were measured using random parameters tobit models. Two latent classes were found and characterized as: ?Health Conscious?, and ?Health Redeemers?. The findings indicate that the classes differed significantly in terms of their preferences, willingness to pay, socio-economic profile, and health-driven motivations.Item Willingness-To-Pay for Pomegranates: Impact of Product and Health Features Using Nonhypothetical Procedures(2011-05-31) McAdams, Callie 1987-The use of functional foods by individuals to address health issues has become increasingly common. Pomegranate fruits and other pomegranate products contain phytochemicals, including several antioxidants that may have benefits when consumed as a functional food. The production of pomegranates in the United States is concentrated in California; yet pomegranates can be grown successfully in other regions. The purpose of this study was two-fold: 1) to address the market potential and consumer preferences for pomegranate fruits and other pomegranate products in Texas and 2) to address issues of experimental auction design and estimation in regards to novel products and health benefits of food products. A nonhypothetical experimental procedure was developed that combined preference rankings with a uniform nth-price auction to elicit preferences and willingness-to-pay (WTP) for pomegranate fruit products. Demographic and behavioral characteristics were collected from a representative sample of subjects in the Bryan-College Station area of Texas. Subjects submitted baseline preference rankings and bids on six pomegranate products and a control fruit product, all with the same retail price. Most participants had never purchased or tasted a pomegranate product. Additional information on the pomegranate products was provided in three forms: tasting information, health and nutrition information, and anti-cancer information. Subjects had the greatest WTP for the control product, followed by the juice product, followed by the ready-to-eat products; the whole pomegranate fruits had the lowest WTP. The preference rankings indicated the same order of preferences for the baseline round, but the ranking of the juice product dropped and the ranking of the ready-to-eat and Texas whole fruits rose when additional information was provided. Estimations of the WTP were done using random-effects tobit models and mixed linear models on the full bids and individual changes in bids. Unengaged bidders and bid censoring were addressed. Demographic variables were typically not predictors of WTP with the exception of previous purchases of pomegranates and household size. There were differences in WTP across information treatments, with tasting information having a greater effect than either health and nutrition information or anti-cancer information. Providing a reference price also increased WTP. Preference rankings were estimated using a rank-ordered logit and a mixed rank-ordered logit model. There was an interaction effect of each information treatment with the product characteristics, indicating that studies of effects of information treatments on preferences are not generalizable across products. There was divergence in the results for the preference rankings from the results of the experimental auction; preference rankings and bids gave different results for the same products.