Commercializing Beef Sub-Sector in Arusha and Dar-es-Salaam Cities, Tanzania: Consumers’ Preferences and Willingness to Pay for Quality Beef

Tanzania has huge livestock resource base of cattle herds amounting to 28,435,825; diverse feeds to satisfy 4.9m TLU annually and several modern slaughter houses. Despite its importance, the sector is used sub-optimally with over 95% of cattle produced traditionally to meet subsistence needs. Several efforts geared to commercialize the sector were supply driven in nature with limited consumers' needs on board. To date there is limited information on preferences of consumers on quality beef (QB) products among consumers; and how would they react to the variation of its prices. Therefore this paper examined consumers' preferences, their willingness to pay (WTP) and motives behind WTP for QB produced locally in Dar-es-Salaam and Arusha cities. Cross sectional design was used to collect data from 278 households that were analyzed through Principal component Analysis and multiple regression models. Findings revealed that 70% of beef consumers preferred fresh unrefrigerated beef with low fat content; and 91% were not willing to pay for QB because their definition of QB differs from that of QB suppliers. Additionally, the price of QB influenced consumers' WTP negatively at 5% significant levels. It is recommended that QB suppliers design and supply a range of beef products tailored to meet needs of traditional beef consumers while championing creation of awareness among traditional beef consumers to demystify the wrong perception QB attributes among them.