The Tart Cherry Market and Purchasing Preferences in the United States

The overall project goal is to gain a better understanding of consumer demand and preferences for tart cherry products to provide meaningful insights to producers, retailers, and marketers working on the promotion of tart cherry products. To achieve this goal, we conducted a nationwide online survey of 1,235 U.S. consumers in July 2019. We collected a variety of insights on the current tart cherry consumer landscape by asking questions about respondent’s socio-demographics, their consumption, dietary and expenditure habits, their knowledge and awareness of tart cherries and derivate products, as well as respondents’ preferences for local food products and their ethnocentric tendencies. In addition, the survey included two discrete choice experiments on tart cherry juice selection, which were designed to enhance our understanding of (i) what attributes are important to consumers when purchasing tart cherry juice, and (ii) how tart cherry juice performs relative to other juice and soft drink alternatives available in the market. Results suggest that tart cherry consumers systematically differ from non-tart cherry consumers. Our key findings are: 1. Around 56% of respondents consumed either fresh or dried tart cherries and/or tart cherry juice in the last three (3) months. Among those tart cherry consumers almost 50% are 25-44 years old compared to non-consumers, where 40% are 45-64 years old. Tart cherry consumers are also more likely to have children and at least three members in their household, which could indicate that tart cherry consumers tend to be adults with younger children. 2. Those respondents that can be classified as tart cherry consumers consume generally more fruit and fruit derivative products. They also tend to place a higher budget share towards purchasing fruits and vegetables compared to their counterparts. This occurs in conjunction with around 33% of tart cherry consumers following a partially meat and/or animal free diet vs. only 13% of non-tart cherry consumers. 3. The main attributes respondents value more when purchasing tart cherry juice are taste, nutrition, price, safety, and naturalness, with non-consumers putting greater relative importance on all of these attributes than tart cherry consumers except for naturalness. The higher relative importance of nutrition for non-consumers is also reflected in a significantly higher premium they are willing to pay to avoid added sugar in tart cherry juice compared to tart cherry consumers ($0.49 vs. $0.61 per 8 oz bottle). 4. Outside of the main production areas in Michigan and Washington, respondents were uncertain about where tart cherries are produced but are on average willing to pay a premium of around $0.25 per 8 oz bottle for tart cherry juice made in the United States. 5. While non-tart cherry consumers have an overall higher willingness-to-pay (WTP) for different beverage options, the difference in marginal WTP between the juice alternatives is substantially smaller than for tart cherry consumers. Jointly these results demonstrate that existing consumers of tart cherries and non-tart cherry consumers differ from one another in various dimensions. These should be taken into consideration when marketing and promoting tart cherries and their derivative products.