Abstract
Quantifying consumer willingness to pay for beef will enhance the development of beef quality systems globally. Over 19,000 consumers from Northern Ireland, Poland, France and Australia participated in a sensory panel where they allocated beef samples to one of four categories: unsatisfactory, good-every-day, betterthan- every-day or premium quality. Consumers were then asked to detail their willingness to pay for these four categories, and complete a short demographic questionnaire which recorded their age, income bracket, occupation, gender, composition of the household and their attitude towards beef. Consumer willingness to pay for beef of different quality levels was found to be remarkably consistent between different demographic groups. Consumers were willing to pay between 150-200% more for premium beef and there was a 50% penalty in value for unsatisfactory beef. By far, the greatest influence of willingness to pay was country of origin. This difference was unable to be explained by the other demographic factors examined in this study, such as occupation, gender, frequency of consumption and the importance of beef in the diet. Consumer age had a small negative relationship with willingness to pay and the importance of meat in the diet had a small positive effect. Therefore, we can conclude that the willingness to pay for beef is highly transferrable between different consumer groups.