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Abstract
Although seafood is considered to be a healthy food choice, the recommended consumption
level of two servings per week is still not reached in most countries. Previous research has
identified potential barriers of seafood consumption, including purchase and consumption
convenience, but it is still unclear to what degree consumer choice is affected by convenience
relative to known choice drivers such as price, species and region of origin. This study
contributes to filling this research gap by analyzing how consumers’ in-store choice of readypackaged
aquaculture oysters is driven by convenience factors (opened versus unopened
presentation format, packaging format and accompaniments with or without visual serving
suggestions) relative to traditionally examined demand factors of price, origin, species, health,
environmental and quality claims. A total of 1,718 Australian oyster consumers participated
in an online choice experiment with visual product stimuli to simulate their choice of oysters
in a retail store. Considering preference heterogeneity respondents’ choices were analyzed
with a scale adjusted latent class model and six different consumer segments differing in their
preferences were identified. Over all respondents price, presentation format and species were
the most important choice drivers, while packaging format and claims only had a minor
impact on consumer choice. Origin and accompaniments were found to be important for some
consumer segments.
These results provide recommendations for policy makers as well as seafood
marketers and are in line with the presented literature in that convenience seems to be an
important driver which can be manipulated in order to increase seafood consumption.
Consumers strongly prefer the ‘ready to eat’ half shell open oysters over closed oysters,
although those are saver and keep fresh longer. Visual serving suggestions and
accompaniments in form of easy to prepare flavor sachets were found to positively increase
choice likelihood.