Exploring the Hierarchy of Product Attributes in U.S. Pecan Consumption

The U.S. pecan industry has continued to experience global growth, but domestic consumption has remained flat over the last decade. Understanding that U.S. consumers continually search out healthy foods and food products, this research evaluates factors that influence their consumption. Making use of survey data from 509 adult participants and utilizing classification and regression tree (CART) analysis, we use a nonparametric modeling approach to identify factors that affect pecan consumption. We find that perceived health benefits are the most significant factor in the hierarchy of variables that affect pecan consumption, with perceived value, overall pecan attributes, and nutritional information following close behind.