Consumers’ perception, preferences and willingness to pay for safety and quality attributes of beef in some selected formal meat markets in the Kumasi Metropolis and Sunyani Municipality of Ghana

As Ghana makes transition into a developed economy, a greater percentage of the population is demanding and eating high quality and safe food products. The demand surge for beef needs to be met by increasing supply and an efficient supply-chain. Using a choice experimental data collected from 400 beef consumers in the Kumasi Metropolis and Sunyani Municipality of Ghana, this study examines consumers‟ perception, preference and willingness to pay for safety and quality attributes of beef product in Ghana. Key attributes include hygienic condition of the shopping environment, excellent and attractive packaging that minimizes contamination, leanness and certification of beef products for safety and quality. Therefore, guaranteed food safety information and attributes should emerge as a new index and basis for future trade in the beef industry. Preference heterogeneity exists among consumers in Kumasi Metropolis and Sunyani Municipality for verified animal health status, food safety inspection and certification and nutritional label. Hence, it is important for beef investors, government and NGO‟s to segment consumers into different classes when designing strategies to mitigate unsafe beef production, marketing and consumption. Consumers were willing to pay high premium for verified animal health stamp in both Kumasi and Sunyani compared to assured nutritional label, food and drugs board food safety certification license. Consumers in Kumasi were willing to pay more for assured nutritional label, food and drugs board food safety certification license compared to Sunyani. Consumer preferences for food safety inspection and certification, and nutritional label are explained by age, income and education in Sunyani Municipality whereas preferences for verified animal health status, food safety inspection and certification, and nutritional label are influenced by age, income, education and gender in Kumasi Metropolis. Albeit the impact of gender and age are negative for verified animal health status and food safety vi certification license in both locations. Therefore, the use of selective demographic targeting to maintain or build strong food safety and quality measures should be seen as a reality by policy makers and investors in the beef industry. Minimizing microbial, chemical and physical food contamination and incidents of unsafe food in Kumasi and Sunyani requires adoption of strict certification and inspections starting from the health status of animals to be slaughtered to the final product with proper labeling information for consumers, combined with strict sanitary inspections at the shopping or selling place. Also, sensitization of women on food safety practices, handling and violation of food safety is very essential in Kumasi and Sunyani. The study reveals that, consumers‟ associate pasture-raised products with attributes important to purchase decisions and all the consumers express their willingness to pay premiums, most of the consumers were willing to pay 15% more for 1 kilogram pasture-raised beef products. The empirical results indicate that apart from socioeconomic characteristics, consumer perceptions and product attributes tend to influence consumers‟ willingness to pay a premium for pasture-raised beef products. Pasture-raised product differentiation is recommend as a feasible marketing strategy and recommend premium pricing strategies and promotion based on verifiable health and animal welfare benefits through labelling of products. The results suggest that Ghanaian consumers‟ in general ranked hygienic condition of shopping environment, attractive packaging, leanness, assured inspection/certification, tenderness, whitish steak colour and freshness attributes as the seven most important attributes considered in purchasing beef products respectively.

Source: KNUST