CONSUMERS’ PREFERRED PURCHASING OUTLET OF SAFER VEGETABLES IN OUAGADOUGOU, BURKINA FASO

Abstract

This study assesses consumers’ preferred purchasing outlet of safer vegetables in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso using Multinomial Logit. A semi-structured questionnaire was administered on 350 consumers of vegetables (cabbage, lettuce and tomatoes) selected through a multistage random sampling procedure from 10 districts of the capital city, Ouagadougou. Descriptive statistics was used in describing consumers’ socio-economic characteristics. Multinomial logit was used to estimate how consumers’ socio-economic characteristics affect their preference for purchasing point/outlets for safer vegetables. The Garrett’s ranking technique was then used to rank the constraints to accessing safe vegetables. The result revealed that 52.57% of the consumers preferred to buy safer vegetables from the roadside market, 31.43% preferred to buy from the supermarket, while the remaining 16.00% preferred to buy from the farm gate. From the estimation results, the supermarket was a preferred choice for the following categories of consumers: the married; the formally educated; the salaried workers; the relatively rich; and those who purchased vegetables much more frequently. With respect to the constraints to accessing safe vegetables, inadequate supply of safe vegetables was ranked first while cultural barriers was the least ranked. Based on the findings, the study recommends that stakeholders should work at scaling up the production of safer vegetables and the marketing of same via the supermarkets. This is against the backdrop of the existence of a potentially huge market among the affluent society of Ouagadougou.