Preferencias de los consumidores regulares y esporádicos de melocotones de la DOP “Melocotón de Calanda”

Abstract

Consumers’ preferences towards peaches with Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) “Melocotón de Calanda”, in the city of Zaragoza, have been analysed in order to provide insights to design future policy to increase fruit demand and improve their marketing. The regular consumers’ preferences (those who consume PDO Calanda peaches at least once a week during its marketing season) and PDO Calanda sporadic consumers’ preferences have been compared. In total, 316 consumers were surveyed in 2008 and 212 consumers in 2009. Chi-square and U of Mann-Whitney tests were performed. Results show that regular consumers represent the major part of the market of this fruit with 2/3 of the respondents. Sporadic consumers are younger than regulars, which is worrying because future demand depends greatly on young people current behaviour. Sporadic consumers have less knowledge about peaches production techniques. New packaging is an alternative to improve the commercialization of peaches. However, this strategy could be risky because regular consumers believe that peaches taste is affected by packaging. Extending the peaches marketing season will have a good acceptability among consumers, especially among regular consumers.