Consumers’ Preferences for Different Fish Groups in Tripura, India
Consumers’ Preferences for Different Fish Groups in Tripura, India
Date
2012
Authors
Debnath, Biswajit
Biradar, R. S.
Pandey, S. K.
Ananthan, P. S.
Das, Apu
Patil, P. R.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Society of Fisheries Technologists (India)Cochin
Abstract
Consumers’ preference for fish in Tripura is facing
an interesting dynamism where consumers are
supplied with variety of fish species or groups.
Preferences for different fish depend on the relative
importance given to various attributes of fish and
the utility received from it. This paper aims at
finding the consumers’ preferences towards various
consumption attributes for different fish groups in
Tripura. The study was conducted for five selected
fish groups across five selected consumption attributes
for rural and urban Tripura separately. Local
carps, inter-state carps, local non-carps, inter-state
non-carps and small weed fish were the five major
fish groups identified in fish markets of Tripura.
Conjoint analysis of consumption attributes showed
34.08% (for rural Tripura) and 29.72% (for urban
Tripura) of relative importance to ‘price’ among five
selected attributes (price, taste, availability, freshness
and source). ‘Freshness of fish’ was found to
be the important consumption attribute for interstate
carps and non-carps. Utility profile was found
to be the highest for small weed fish (total utility
= 31.06) in rural and for local carps (total utility =
35.08) in urban Tripura among five selected Choice
Fish Groups. The difference in utility profile
between rural and urban may be due to the
combination of different factors like higher average
income in urban area and greater availability of
small weed fish in rural water resources. High
income urban consumers have higher purchase
power to buy high priced local carps. Boosting up
local fish production to reduce the price of fish
using ‘principle of supply’ is one of the major
strategic options suggested in this study.
Description
Keywords
Consumers’ preferences, fish consumption, conjoint analysis, fish consumption attributes
Citation
Fishery Technology 49(2):193-198