Does Local Label Bias Consumer Taste Bud and Preference: Evidence of a Strawberry Sensory Experiment

Demand for local food, particularly for fresh vegetable and fruits, keeps increasing. Consumer claimed reasons of purchasing local food often include that local food are fresher, more environmental friendly and can support local community, which implies that the local information can affect consumer’ perception of food quality. Previous research mainly focused on the impact of local information/label on consumer preference as a credence attribute that is not observable even after purchasing the products. However, the local information of food may also influence consumer perception of the other two types of important attributes, search and credence attributes. In this study, we linked sensory test with consumer willingness to pay (WTP) to determine the impact of local information on consumer perception of strawberry search and experience attributes and how these three types of attributes affect consumer choice. Results show that providing local information positively affect some of the search and experience attributes such as color, freshness and flavor. Locality information is not a significant factor to determine consumers’ WTP. In addition, freshness and color have significant impact on consumer WTP before respondents taste the strawberries while flavor and texture became dominant to have most influential impact on consumer WTP after tasting.