FOREWORD

The workshop itself was unusual in that the number of participants was limited and the amount of discussion and debate maximized. The aim of the workshop was to bring together both researchers and marketing managers with experience in research and implementation of internal product quality as a marketing instrument. Proof that the workshop was successful can be found in the following papers and can be attributed to the planning and work of the conveners Harry Barendse and Ton von Gaasbeek.

I would also like to thank, on behalf of the workshop participants, all of those with the Netherlands Central Bureau of Fruit and Vegetable Auctions, the Agricultural Economics Research Institute LEI, and the Secretariat of the ISHS who made our stay in Wageningen so fruitful.

Finally, I must acknowledge and thank all those people at the University of Georgia Experiment Station in Griffin, Georgia for their assistance in putting this issue together, particularly Ms. Marilyn Slocum and Ms. Margie Lusk for entering all the manuscripts into the computer system.
Jeffrey L. Jordan
Editor
University of Georgia


PREFACE

On behalf of the Commission for Horticultural Economics and Labour Management of the International Society for Horticultural Sciences I am delighted to present the publication of the papers from the workshop on "Consumer Perception of International Product Quality."

The workshop was a joint venture of our Commission, the Central Bureau of Fruit and Vegetable Auctions in the Netherlands, and the Agricultural Economics Research Institute of The Hague.

We must thank Mr. Harry Barendse from the Central Bureau, who first had the idea and took the initiative to arrange the workshop. And we must thank Mr. Ton van Gaasbeek from the LEI for performing the main organizational work and preparing the program.

We are all familiar and concerned about the growing public criticism of the quality of agricultural and horticultural produce and modern production methods. Modern agriculture and horticulture is blamed for producing "tasteless mass products" of inferior nutritional value poisoned with chemical residuals and having detrimental effects on our environment.

What are the issues?

• Modern production techniques, especially those to increase yields, may have adverse effects on the flavour and the composition of the products.
• The extensive use of chemicals may increase the risk of chemical residuals on the produce and pollution of the environment.
• The external quality of the produce has been improved considerably. The incentive system of the market mechanism is rewarding first of all, the external appearance of the produce and secondly large quantities of uniform products which can be handled easily in the distribution chain. However, the correlation between external and internal properties of the product may be low.

These facts and developments coincide with the following economical, physiological and psychological facts and trends.

• With increasing wealth, the basic physiological needs for food are more and more saturated, and other motives for food consumption are gaining relative importance. These include hedonic values, safety, social values and environmental goals.
• With increasing affluence and diversity of the food supply, the subjective hedonic value of our food has decreased. This was the outcome of longterm longitudinal studies measuring the hedonic value of food by some psychophysiological indicators.

  Today the consumer's perception threshold of the basic taste characteristics, such as sweet, bitter, sour and salty, is higher than twenty years ago. In the future, therefore, the taste of a tomato will be perceived less intensely, and its subjective hedonic value will be lower, than the taste of the same tomato twenty years ago. The pampered consumer in an affluent society has become less sensitive to taste stimuli and has lost a part of their ability to enjoy food.

Today the consumer's perception threshold of the basic taste characteristics, such as sweet, bitter, sour and salty, is higher than twenty years ago. In the future, therefore, the taste of a tomato will be perceived less intensely, and its subjective hedonic value will be lower, than the taste of the same tomato twenty years ago. The pampered consumer in an affluent society has become less sensitive to taste stimuli and has lost a part of their ability to enjoy food.

• Given this situation, more and more consumers are perceiving product quality as inferior to product quality in the past. This assumed inferior quality is often associated with the modern production methods, removed from nature. The image of modern food is deteriorating.
• Many consumers, who have developed a critical attitude toward food quality, tend to be selective in their perceptions of facts. Information on tasteless products, residues on food, food scandals, etc., are preferred, while other information is neglected. The mass media react to the information preferences of the consumer by offering news which meets that demand. Consequently the public, and the subsequently published opinion, tend to generalize and exaggerate the cases of inferior product quality or health risk by residuals.

This is in brief the situation we must address.

Much research effort has been devoted to the problems of how to produce and measure quality. However, it is not sufficient to simply measure quality. Consumers' decisions and satisfaction are determined by how product quality is perceived. For this reason, the measurement of consumer perception and the analysis of the determinants of the perception process are an essential and integrated part of all research. The aim, of course, is the improvement of product quality and consumer satisfaction --a necessary precondition for a good position in international competition.

Market research, especially consumer research, is a tool to be used to fulfill this challenging task. However, market research is more than recording prices, quantities and qualities and analyzing their interdependencies. For market research to meet the future requirements of markets in affluent societies, it must integrate the theories and methods of modern sociology, psychology and even physiology into the research program.