Consumer Preferences for Fruit and Vegetables with Credence-Based Attributes: A Review

The food marketing sector is responding to an increased level of interest to consumer demand for products with an increasingly wide array of attributes. As evidence, there has been double digit proliferation of offerings in the produce section of retailers on an annual basis. Differentiation claims include factors related to experiential eating quality as well as credence attributes related to environmental and other social outcomes. To establish the overall importance and willingness to purchase and/or to pay for such foods, a summary of selected studies on such credence attributes and a critique of the research methodologies encountered in those studies may be informative. This study aims to identify and rank a number of attributes, focusing on how their statistical significance across consumer studies of fresh produce buying decisions.