Households’ consumption and quality perceptions of local (ofada) rice in South-West Nigeria.

Doctoral Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg.

Rice has become an essential crop in Africa, with imports into the African continent accounting for more than a quarter of the world’s trade in rice. It has become one of the fastest-growing food sources to both rich and poor households. In Nigeria’s household food consumption, rice is the fifth most common food after tubers, vegetables, beans, and sorghum representing about 5.8% of households’ spending. In recent years, local rice production has expanded significantly in Nigeria and is increasingly becoming an alternative to foreign rice with government’s initiative to make the country self-sufficient in rice production under its Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA) and other policy initiatives put in place to address the local rice supply-demand gap. Following improvements in processing, polishing and packaging, many local rice brands with enhanced physical quality attributes that can compete favourably with imported rice brands are now available in Nigerian markets. Among these local rice varieties, local (ofada) rice is peculiar to but not limited to South-west, Nigeria and has been gaining international recognition in the recent time. The general objective of this study is to estimate households’ consumption and quality perceptions of local (ofada) rice in South-west, Nigeria. A multi-stage random sampling technique was used to select 600 rice consuming households through a well-structured questionnaire. Different econometric techniques (IV-Tobit, Factor and cluster analyses, Hedonic pricing model, Kendall concordance test, Profile deviation analysis) were used to analyse the data. The results of the descriptive statistics show that on the average, quantity of local (ofada) rice consumed by a household ranges from 6.19kg to 25.8kg per month with income ranging from ₦38,265.35 to ₦157,224.71. The dietary knowledge score registered an average of 4.67 (out of 10). Also, over 50 percent of the households are headed by male, 85 percent are married, 54.8 percent has family size of less than five people, while 50 percent of the participating households have two or more income earners. The result of IV-Tobit reveals that dietary knowledge is significantly influenced by factors such as being a household meal planner or having a household member(s) on a special diet. Dietary knowledge as hypothesized, was found to positively influence the consumption of local (ofada) rice, as were some sociodemographic variables. The results of factor analysis show that households valued virtually all the local (ofada) rice attributes. Three clusters of local (ofada) rice consumers’ households were identified under segmentation and each segment (cluster) has different concerns and interests towards local (ofada) rice variety. Cluster 1 considered all the attributes of local (ofada) rice variety as important and was named meticulous cluster; cluster 2 valued physical appearance of the local (ofada) rice and was named extrinsic cluster; while cluster 3 was named casual because it was neutral to all the attributes considered for quality perceptions of local (ofada) rice, indicating a type of ethnocentric behaviour of the consumers. The result of Kendall concordance coefficient shows 73.74% agreement in ranking quality attributes of local (ofada) rice by consumers’ households. Colour, perceived nutrient level, taste, grain shape and rate of breakage were the most ranked quality attributes with Mean Attribute Ranking Scores (MARS) of 1.56, 1.69, 3.12, 5.53, and 5.86, respectively. Households are willing to pay Marginal Implicit Prices (MIPs) of ₦71.03 ($0.20), ₦45.23 ($0.13), ₦32.98 ($0.09), ₦21.06 ($0.06), and ₦14.41 (0.04), per kg for colour, grain cohesion, grain shape, perceived nutrient level and perceived chemical storage while discounting MIPs of ₦60.55 ($0.17), ₦19.36 ($0.05), ₦17.14 ($0.05) and ₦6.00 ($0.02) for texture, rate of breakage, perceived freshness, and low swelling capacity per kg of local (ofada) rice, respectively. The result of profile deviation analysis also reveals significant negative consumer satisfaction and loyalty implications of deviating from ideal consumer profile. Both consumer loyalty and consumer satisfaction have the same level of negative consequences. When considering the aggregate (total) profile deviation in both cases, the variance explained by the models are almost the same for satisfaction and loyalty. Moreover, when looking at the disaggregated Profile Deviation (PD) effects, both hedonistic value and trust are predicting negative consumer satisfaction and loyalty outcomes. This suggests that improving consumer satisfaction and loyalty have similar challenges and required same task. It is consumer hedonistic value and trust in local (ofada) rice that account for the significance of the total Profile Deviation result. Therefore, this study recommends that nutritional information that are appealing about local (ofada) rice variety be introduced through advertisements on different media such as radio, television and print media. Also, a marketing-mix determination should be adopted, which involves developing and implementing a strategy for delivering an effective combination of want-satisfying features to consumers within target market for local (ofada) rice as the aim is to make the variety available across the country. In addition, modern rice processing and polishing that incorporate traditional technology are required to improve both extrinsic and intrinsic qualities (swelling capacity, rate of breakage, texture, etc.) of local (ofada) rice to enhance consumers’ households acceptability, affordability and competitiveness. Lastly, efforts should be made by the concerned authorities and stakeholders in the rice value chain in making sure that there is reduction in cost of production in order to lower the market price of local (ofada) rice and in extension, local rice generally

Author's first name on title page of this thesis appears as 'Seun for the full first name which is Oluwaseun.