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The journal AGRICULTURA (A) publishes scientific works from the following fields: animal science, plant production, farm mechanisation, land management, agricultural economics, ecology, biotechnology, microbiology
ISSN 1581-5439
Home Issues Issue 16 Premia for differentiated products at the retail level: can the market put a value on the mountain attribute?

Premia for differentiated products at the retail level: can the market put a value on the mountain attribute?

Cesar REVOREDO-GIHA and Philip LEAT
pp. 49-59 (2012)                                                                     

“So much is missed in the word mountain food – there is culture but it is not a mountain culture, it is a Highland culture” 
“When you mentioned mountain food, I thought of goats and Heidi and Switzerland”
“I wouldn’t want to buy Venison from anywhere, like the South of England”

Some comments about mountain food products from focus groups held in Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Fort William, Au- gust 2008 (Scotland, UK).

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this paper is, by comparing products with a mountain provenance with those from non-mountain areas, to explore whether the market puts a premium on the ‘mountain attribute’. First, we present a theoretical framework on attributes and cues that helps answering the question what is “mountain” representing in a products or in other term, is it an attribute or a cue. Second, based on a shelves survey collected as part of the EuroMARC, we analyse for several products (apples, sausages, water and cheese) and countries (Austria, France, Norway, Scotland and Slovenia) using a hedonic price regression approach whether a premium is paid for mountain food products in comparison with identified similar non- mountain food products. The results indicate that the answer is mixed and depends on the product and country. Thus, premia was found only in the case of cheese and for Austria, Norway and Slovenia.

Key words: mountain quality food products, attributes and cues, hedonic regression

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