The Willingness to Pay for Cider Products: Results of a Survey on Habits and Consumption Behavior

Abstract

Purpose The objective of the paper is to investigate the impact of habits and consumption behavior on the willingness to pay (WTP) for cider by surveying young consumers. Method The analysis is based on a questionnaire distributed to a group of 433 French business students from December 2017 to January 2018. Specifically, the questionnaire is designed to test whether young consumers would pay a premium price or not for quality ciders with respect to a traditional sweet cider with similar characteristics. We are modelling the premium that consumers are willing to pay for an organic cider, a farmer cider and rosé cider. To accommodate the feature of a significant proportion of zero or negative premiums in dependent variables, the Heckman two-stage estimation procedure is performed. Results Results show that the young generation consider cider as a cheap, festive and non-organic beverage and is willing to pay a premium for quality ciders like specifically rosé and farmer ciders. Conclusion The results from this research have useful implications not only for the cider market but also in the understanding of the characteristics of competitive beverages that young consumers may prefer and value.