Beef traceability: are Greek consumers willing to pay?

Purpose – This paper seeks to explore two issues, namely: whether Greek consumers are interested in information provided to them for beef meat through systems of traceability, and whether they are willing to pay in order to acquire specific information for beef meat. Design/methodology/approach – The approach is taken is discrete choice modeling with a multinomial logit approach treating 11 different types of information. Findings – Consumers are generally willing to pay higher for traceable beef, but not all variables have equal and/or positive importance for consumers. For instance, brand is an important distinguishing factor only for higher educated respondents, but information on animal health provides negative utility for all respondents. Practical implications – Marketing strategy issues are raised, as the importance and utility consumers attach to traceability systems'-based information varies. Originality/value – This paper provides further evidence on what information traceability systems should contain.