Consumer Food Preferences Survey Methodology

Animal Products

The table in the Intel for Ag market intelligence report summarizes the percentage of a product’s surveyed purchasers — those who said they often, sometimes or rarely buy a product — who ranked particular attributes as one of the top three, four or five attributes they think are important when buying the particular product. Attributes shaded in a darker color were those considered important by a greater proportion of product purchasers. The following summary describes how these consumer preferences data were collected and cleaned.

To understand the importance consumers place on visual and nonvisual food product attributes when they make buying decisions, the Intel for Ag team surveyed Midwest consumers during 2023. For consumer responses to be qualified responses, they must have consented to participate in the research; identified as a primary or co-primary grocery shopper within a family; purchased an item often, sometimes or rarely; and reported living in one of the following states: Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky,
Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas or Nebraska.

The survey collected 2,290 responses. After removing incompletes, 1,963 responses were used for this analysis.

The survey asked consumers to indicate how frequently they purchase 12 products on average throughout a year: often (i.e., buy at least once a week), sometimes (i.e., buy once a month or a few times a month), rarely (i.e., buy less often than once a month) or never (i.e., do not buy at all). When a consumer indicated buying a product often, sometimes or rarely, the survey asked two follow-up questions. One involved ranking the distribution points used to purchase the product. A second involved ranking attributes considered important when purchasing the product.

For a product, the list of attributes was customized to those that could realistically explain the product’s production process or features. Attributes included visual cues — those you could see when evaluating a product — and nonvisual cues or credence
attributes — those you couldn’t see in a product. The survey presented the following question to collect attribute preferences: “Which of the following attributes are important to you when purchasing PRODUCT? Click and drag the attributes you think
are important from the list on the left to the box on the right. You can choose as many attributes as you like. Then, rank the attributes based on their relative importance by clicking and dragging them up or down within the box. The attribute ranked with a “1” would be the one you think is most important.”