Assessing the effect of consumer purchasing criteria for types of rice in Togo A choice modeling approach

Many reports on consumer preference in West Africa indicate that consumers prefer imported rice to locally produced rice due to the inferior grain quality of the latter. Complementing these reports, this study was undertaken to provide valuable information to researchers and policy makers on consumer criteria for selecting alternative types of rice in Togo. Using a multiple correspondence analysis on 336 respondents in 15 prefectures in Togo, the results highlighted the features cleanness, whiteness and taste as the first, second and third purchasing criteria respectively for non-parboiled imported rice while the choice of non-parboiled local rice was based on taste, swelling capacity and, again, taste as the first, second and third selection criteria, respectively. These results were reinforced by using a random utility model to perform the consumer utility analysis and their willingness-to-pay for the most important purchasing criteria of rice types. The results clearly showed that the surveyed consumers preferred non-parboiled imported rice to the non-parboiled local rice; the average utility of non-parboiled imported rice (2.198) was considerably greater than that estimated for non-parboiled local rice (-0.197) in the first purchasing criteria. To have the same level of utility provided by non-parboiled imported rice by consuming non-parboiled local rice, the surveyed consumers were willing to pay more for cleanness (231.2 FCFA/kg) and whiteness (263.5 FCFA/kg) in the first and second purchasing criteria categories, respectively. Although these results might have some limitations due to errors and inaccuracies in the consumer responses to the survey questionnaire, they do have implications for research and policy makers in Togo and the rest of West Africa.