ISHS Acta Horticulturae 97: VI Symposium on Horticultural Economics
A STUDY OF THE SPANISH HOME MARKET FOR ORANGES AND MANDARINES: I.- THE RETAIL LEVEL |
| Authors: | J.L. Benedicto, E. Puig, C. Casado |
| Abstract:
We have intented to study the home spanish oranges and mandarines market, because of our scarce knowledge of it, through direct observation at the retailer level. Two cities have been chosen for this survey, one of them situated in the most producer area in Spain, Valencia, assuming that the market in these areas could take up some rather peculiar characteristics and the other, Zaragoza, the market of which may be considered in some way as the representative of the whole country. By means of a stratified sampling according to different kinds of shops and different times along the day, we carried out a series of observations from October 1977 to February 1979 according to some leaflets that the visitors brought with them. Everything was made for four different citrus groups: varieties of navel types, varieties of non-navel oranges, mandarines satsumas and mandarines clementinas. The obtained information was tabulated, techniques of multiple regression were applied utilizing functions of different type in order to determine those variations that had an influence on the different consumers and finally the discriminant analysis was employed to delimit those functions and variations that could permit to stablish the different sorts of consumers. The quality and presentation of the observed citrus was superior to what we could think at first. Howewer, we could see important differences. We must remark the almost absolute lack of promotion or publicity means at the retailer level. In the results we also saw better quality, appearance and care on the citrus sold in the market of Zaragoza than in Valencia, the producer area. The level of exigence in the people of these two cities appears not to be very much over the quality level offered to them as it is proved by the fact that there have not been many variables of this type which have appeared significant in the performed analysis. In spite of all, it must be improved in some ways. The analysis we have accomplished have given moderate coefficients of multiple determination, but some F values highly significant. | |
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