Factors associated with the purchase of designation of origin lamb meat.

As in other products, quality labels that designate the origin of lamb meat are increasingly used by consumers as a cue for inferring the quality of the meat. The aim of the present paper is to identify those factors that most affect the purchase of lamb with an origin quality label. For this purpose a total of 371 questionnaires were carried out in the region of Aragón located in the north east of Spain. This region produces 48.5% of the total amount of lamb meat with a Spanish protected geographical indication, whilst it also has the country's greatest per capita consumption (6.8 kg/person/year). To identify the most determining factors a logistic regression analysis was performed between three groups of buyers, characterised by their degree of loyalty towards purchasing origin quality-labelled lamb. The results show that those buyers who are less loyal to the label pay less attention to the origin of the meat when forming quality expectations at the time of purchase, whilst these are the buyers that place greatest importance on animal feeding as an aspect affecting the final quality of lamb meat. The buyers that are very loyal to the quality label associate this label with a product that offers greater guarantees and is healthier. Lamb meat buyers with medium loyalty to quality labels, consider quality-labelled lamb meat has better intrinsic attributes. Copyright (c) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.