Consumers’ preferences for traditional meat products: production system and objective quality cues in Iberian ham

Abstract

When assessing meat, consumers use a large number of perceived and objective quality cues. This study analyses consumers’ preferences for perceived and objective quality cues in traditional meat products, focusing on several cues largely unstudied to date. It relies on a labelled discrete choice experiment administered to consumers of Iberian ham, an archetypal traditional Spanish meat product. The results indicate that the feeding-and-management system (acorn-fed or fodder-fed) generally determines the consumers’ preferences, with objective quality cues (breed purity and slicing type) influencing preferences regardless of the management system and perceived quality cues linked to the high-natural-value production agrosystem of the Dehesa only doing so for the acorn-fed system. There is a high degree of heterogeneity among consumers’ preferences, especially for the agrosystem of origin, suggesting that campaigns to raise awareness about the associated environmental and sociocultural values and a package design referencing the agrosystem are useful business strategies to integrate this added value into the product.