Willingness to pay and sensory acceptability for minimally processed vegetables: behavior of consumers with different household incomes

Abstract

Willingness to pay (WTP) and sensory acceptability for minimally processed (MP) vegetables were studied. A total of 116 participants of two diff erent household incomes (HI) were considered. Two types of preparations (bags with whole vegetables and trays with MP vegetables), and two types of presentations (mix vegetables for soup and mix vegetables for salad), were evaluated. Low income (LI) participants off ered more money in general than the medium-high income (MI) participants. However, the off ers of the two preparations (soup and salad) did not show signifi cant diff erences. The 4 samples (two preparations: soup and salad; and two presentations: bags and trays) had good sensory acceptability with values between 6.5 and 8.3, on a scale of 1-9. MI consumers had higher acceptability for mixed vegetables for soup than for salad vegetables; however, LI participants showed no diff erence between the types of preparation, observing for both samples (soup and salad) high acceptability. For both HI, Check All That Apply (CATA) questions showed that phrases such as “It is unreliable” and “I distrust how it was prepared” were associated with the trays, while the phrase “It takes time to prepare or cook” was associated with bags.