This paper proposes to estimate consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for wine characteristics usin... more This paper proposes to estimate consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for wine characteristics using incentive compatible laboratory experiments with participants randomly selected from the general population. The main question is to identify the value of a supposedly well known Appellation of Origin (namely “Appellation d’Origine Controlee Bourgogne”) compared to other quality signals like grape variety or brand, in the lower-middle range segment of the market. In order to assess the respective values of these different characteristics for consumers, the experiments compares wine made from the same grape variety, “Pinot Noir”, which is the grape variety of red Burgundy wines. Sessions were carried out in France, and Germany. Real sales at a random selling price, based on the Becker, DeGroot, Marschak (BDM) mechanism, revealed consumers’ WTP in three different information conditions (blind tasting, label examination,tasting and label examination). Results show that sensory characteris...
Background and objectives : Vegetables are one of the most difficult categories of food to introd... more Background and objectives : Vegetables are one of the most difficult categories of food to introduce in children’s diet (Cooke & Wardle, 2005) and children’s low consumption of vegetables is pointed as a major source of public health concern in many developed countries. A better understanding of children sensory preferences could help to improve children’s vegetables acceptance.
We study the relative willingness-to-pay (WTP) of consumers according to the diversity of supply ... more We study the relative willingness-to-pay (WTP) of consumers according to the diversity of supply in a market and we show how the presence of substitutes for a given product leads to question the incentive mechanisms commonly used in experimental auctions. We propose a Surplus Comparison Mechanism (SCM) in order to yield WTP estimates which better take into account the choice set available to consumers. After showing the efficiency of this mechanism we test the SCM in a laboratory experiment, reconsidering WTP for food environmental certifications (Integrated Pest Management and Organic certification). It appears that WTPs are decreasing when more alternative certifications are offered to consumers.
A partir des séries statistiques issues de la Comptabilité Nationale, ce texte analyse les grande... more A partir des séries statistiques issues de la Comptabilité Nationale, ce texte analyse les grandes tendances de la consommation des produits animaux en France depuis le début des années cinquante. Le taux de croissance de la consommation des viandes diminue régulièrement tout au long de la période, et une tendance à la saturation se manifeste de plus en plus clairement au cours des années quatre-vingt. Les données des enquêtes de consommation mettent en évidence la forte hétérogénéité des comportements mais aussi leur régularité en fonction de certaines caractéristiques des ménages comme le revenu et l’âge par exemple. Ces différents constats suggèrent que parallèlement à la poursuite des efforts de productivité, une politique de différenciation des produits est à l’ordre du jour.
To examine whether four pre-selected front-of-pack nutrition labels improve food purchases in rea... more To examine whether four pre-selected front-of-pack nutrition labels improve food purchases in real-life grocery shopping settings, we put 1.9 million labels on 1266 food products in four categories in 60 supermarkets and analyzed the nutritional quality of 1,668,301 purchases using the FSA nutrient profiling score. Effect sizes were 17 times smaller on average than those found in comparable laboratory studies. The most effective nutrition label, Nutri-Score, increased the purchases of foods in the top third of their category nutrition-wise by 14%, but had no impact on the purchases of foods with medium, low, or unlabeled nutrition quality. Therefore, Nutri-Score only improved the nutritional quality of the basket of labeled foods purchased by 2.5% (−0.142 FSA points). Nutri-Score’s performance improved with the variance (but not the mean) of the nutritional quality of the category. In-store surveys suggest that Nutri-Score’s ability to attract attention and help shoppers rank produc...
International competition in the wine sector is one of the most widely discussed subjects among e... more International competition in the wine sector is one of the most widely discussed subjects among economists who are in charge of analysing the agricultural sector and regional development. The growth of exports from the so called “New World” countries (Australia, South Africa, Chile, Argentina, United States) questions rural concepts of wine-growing economy and makes it necessary to review consumers’ expectations, the whole economic organisation and marketing strategies that are essential in the economic activity. However, if things are more closely examined, wine economy is symptomatic of a vision of market economy where the benefits of the economic activity, in terms of employment, regional planning, environment externalities, etc. are at the heart of the concerns of sustainable development. Therefore the classic opposition between Appellations of Origin and pure brand-named wines, is often perceived by the general public as a confrontation between, on the one hand, a worthy system which guarantees positive externalities and on the other hand, a commercial system characteristic of industrial economy and which would have as a sole objective the advancement of the private interests of the firm. It could be stated that the Appellations of Origin system has enriched wine growing and has worldwide economic results almost unequalled in agriculture. Nevertheless, the European market shares on strategic markets as that of the United Kingdom or North America are relatively large. It is therefore necessary to measure the reaction of consumers to the appellations of origin and to evaluate the real willingness to pay for this kind of wines. This paper investigates this topic, taking the example of the world chardonnay’s war. Indeed, this variety is one of the most important of white wine in the world (more than 150 000ha). This variety is both used in the most famous Appellations of Origin (like Burgundy and Champagne) and in the most known international private brands (like Gallo, Jakob’s Creek). In aim to estimate the differences of willingness to pay for these two kinds of wines, we have set-up the following experimental study. We focuse on consumers’ valuation of chardonnay wines with three signals of quality: 1) Chardonnay “Pays d’OC”, 2) Burgundy Appellation of Origin , 3) Gallo’s brand of chardonnay. Following Combris, Lange, Issanchou (2004), we use a BDM procedure in which participants evaluate these three wines in three different conditions. The three wines were first evaluated after blind tasting, then after examination of the bottle with no tasting, and finally after examination of the bottle and tasting. After the evaluation of each chardonnay, participants were asked to submit a written bid. To avoid endowment effects and strategic behaviors, participants were informed that only two situations (that is two wines in two information conditions) would be randomly selected and become effective. We then show : 1) Willingness to pay for Burgundy is greater in all the experimental situations, but much less in the blind tasting. 2) Appellation of Origin is greatly valorised in the visual situation by a French panel, and the Gallo’s wine is significantly underestimated. Willingness to pay for burgundy is quite different between the three experimental situations. The trade-off between label and taste goes in favour of the label. 3) There does not exist an explicit hierarchy between wines (heterogeneity of tastes and no vertical differentiation) 1 bazoche@ivry.inra.fr; combris@ivry.inra.fr; giraud@ivry.inra.fr
ABSTRACT Until recently, fresh fruits such as pears were provided to markets as generic products.... more ABSTRACT Until recently, fresh fruits such as pears were provided to markets as generic products. However, these products are now differentiated by cultivars, origins and appearances, as well as by companies’ production and processing methods. Therefore, we observe a lot of denominations of origin, retailers’ and private labels in order to signal the differentiation to the consumers, who are often willing to pay large price premiums for products with specific attributes. Indeed the value consumers put on fruits depends on the degree of product-information that are available to them and this information derives mainly from tasting and from the label of the products. In this paper, we used an experimental auction to investigate how quality attributes information affects consumers’ willingness to pay for different types of pears, particularly choosing the Portuguese "Rocha" pear variety. The BDM auction mechanism was combined with sensory analyses in order to develop an integrated approach to evaluate product attributes. The main results show that information on the products’ characteristics related to food safety instantly influences consumers’ willingness to pay. However, it appears that sensory intrinsic attributes related to taste finally beats the guarantee of food safety in driving the buying behaviour.
[fre] A partir d'une analyse secondaire des données d'une enquête sur les repas des Fra... more [fre] A partir d'une analyse secondaire des données d'une enquête sur les repas des Français, cette étude a permis de mieux cerner certains aspects de la différenciation sociale des comportements alimentaires notamment en matière de caractéristiques des repas, et de type d'aliment utilisé selon les circonstances de consommation. [eng] Characteristics of meals of social groups - From an analysis of
Rencontres Autour Des Recherches Sur Les Ruminants, 2003
A partir des differentes sources statistiques disponibles, ce texte analyse les grandes tendances... more A partir des differentes sources statistiques disponibles, ce texte analyse les grandes tendances de la consommation de viande et de produits laitiers en France depuis le debut des annees cinquante. Le taux de croissance de la consommation diminue regulierement tout au long de la periode et une tendance a la saturation se manifeste clairement au cours des annees quatre-vingt. Parallelement, le developpement de l'information nutritionnelle entraine des inflechissements durables de la demande en particulier pour la viande de boeuf. L'heterogeneite des comportements des consommateurs est tres forte, mais des differences systematiques en fonction des caracteristiques des menages continuent de se manifester. Ces differences, en particulier celles liees au revenu, a l'âge et au niveau d'education, permettent de faire des hypotheses sur les evolutions futures de la demande.
L’alimentation et l’environnement sont au coeur du developpement durable. Toutefois, des resultat... more L’alimentation et l’environnement sont au coeur du developpement durable. Toutefois, des resultats de travaux experimentaux, conduits par des chercheurs du departement SAE2 de l’INRA sur la perception des consommateurs et leur disposition a payer pour des produits respectant certains criteres du developpement durable, montrent que la capacite de transmission de l’information au consommateur par les labels est imparfaite. De fait, afin de promouvoir les pratiques liees au developpement durable nous montrons que l’utilisation d’autres instruments, comme les taxes et les standards de qualite, pourrait etre envisagee.
This paper proposes to estimate consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for wine characteristics usin... more This paper proposes to estimate consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for wine characteristics using incentive compatible laboratory experiments with participants randomly selected from the general population. The main question is to identify the value of a supposedly well known Appellation of Origin (namely “Appellation d’Origine Controlee Bourgogne”) compared to other quality signals like grape variety or brand, in the lower-middle range segment of the market. In order to assess the respective values of these different characteristics for consumers, the experiments compares wine made from the same grape variety, “Pinot Noir”, which is the grape variety of red Burgundy wines. Sessions were carried out in France, and Germany. Real sales at a random selling price, based on the Becker, DeGroot, Marschak (BDM) mechanism, revealed consumers’ WTP in three different information conditions (blind tasting, label examination,tasting and label examination). Results show that sensory characteris...
Background and objectives : Vegetables are one of the most difficult categories of food to introd... more Background and objectives : Vegetables are one of the most difficult categories of food to introduce in children’s diet (Cooke & Wardle, 2005) and children’s low consumption of vegetables is pointed as a major source of public health concern in many developed countries. A better understanding of children sensory preferences could help to improve children’s vegetables acceptance.
We study the relative willingness-to-pay (WTP) of consumers according to the diversity of supply ... more We study the relative willingness-to-pay (WTP) of consumers according to the diversity of supply in a market and we show how the presence of substitutes for a given product leads to question the incentive mechanisms commonly used in experimental auctions. We propose a Surplus Comparison Mechanism (SCM) in order to yield WTP estimates which better take into account the choice set available to consumers. After showing the efficiency of this mechanism we test the SCM in a laboratory experiment, reconsidering WTP for food environmental certifications (Integrated Pest Management and Organic certification). It appears that WTPs are decreasing when more alternative certifications are offered to consumers.
A partir des séries statistiques issues de la Comptabilité Nationale, ce texte analyse les grande... more A partir des séries statistiques issues de la Comptabilité Nationale, ce texte analyse les grandes tendances de la consommation des produits animaux en France depuis le début des années cinquante. Le taux de croissance de la consommation des viandes diminue régulièrement tout au long de la période, et une tendance à la saturation se manifeste de plus en plus clairement au cours des années quatre-vingt. Les données des enquêtes de consommation mettent en évidence la forte hétérogénéité des comportements mais aussi leur régularité en fonction de certaines caractéristiques des ménages comme le revenu et l’âge par exemple. Ces différents constats suggèrent que parallèlement à la poursuite des efforts de productivité, une politique de différenciation des produits est à l’ordre du jour.
To examine whether four pre-selected front-of-pack nutrition labels improve food purchases in rea... more To examine whether four pre-selected front-of-pack nutrition labels improve food purchases in real-life grocery shopping settings, we put 1.9 million labels on 1266 food products in four categories in 60 supermarkets and analyzed the nutritional quality of 1,668,301 purchases using the FSA nutrient profiling score. Effect sizes were 17 times smaller on average than those found in comparable laboratory studies. The most effective nutrition label, Nutri-Score, increased the purchases of foods in the top third of their category nutrition-wise by 14%, but had no impact on the purchases of foods with medium, low, or unlabeled nutrition quality. Therefore, Nutri-Score only improved the nutritional quality of the basket of labeled foods purchased by 2.5% (−0.142 FSA points). Nutri-Score’s performance improved with the variance (but not the mean) of the nutritional quality of the category. In-store surveys suggest that Nutri-Score’s ability to attract attention and help shoppers rank produc...
International competition in the wine sector is one of the most widely discussed subjects among e... more International competition in the wine sector is one of the most widely discussed subjects among economists who are in charge of analysing the agricultural sector and regional development. The growth of exports from the so called “New World” countries (Australia, South Africa, Chile, Argentina, United States) questions rural concepts of wine-growing economy and makes it necessary to review consumers’ expectations, the whole economic organisation and marketing strategies that are essential in the economic activity. However, if things are more closely examined, wine economy is symptomatic of a vision of market economy where the benefits of the economic activity, in terms of employment, regional planning, environment externalities, etc. are at the heart of the concerns of sustainable development. Therefore the classic opposition between Appellations of Origin and pure brand-named wines, is often perceived by the general public as a confrontation between, on the one hand, a worthy system which guarantees positive externalities and on the other hand, a commercial system characteristic of industrial economy and which would have as a sole objective the advancement of the private interests of the firm. It could be stated that the Appellations of Origin system has enriched wine growing and has worldwide economic results almost unequalled in agriculture. Nevertheless, the European market shares on strategic markets as that of the United Kingdom or North America are relatively large. It is therefore necessary to measure the reaction of consumers to the appellations of origin and to evaluate the real willingness to pay for this kind of wines. This paper investigates this topic, taking the example of the world chardonnay’s war. Indeed, this variety is one of the most important of white wine in the world (more than 150 000ha). This variety is both used in the most famous Appellations of Origin (like Burgundy and Champagne) and in the most known international private brands (like Gallo, Jakob’s Creek). In aim to estimate the differences of willingness to pay for these two kinds of wines, we have set-up the following experimental study. We focuse on consumers’ valuation of chardonnay wines with three signals of quality: 1) Chardonnay “Pays d’OC”, 2) Burgundy Appellation of Origin , 3) Gallo’s brand of chardonnay. Following Combris, Lange, Issanchou (2004), we use a BDM procedure in which participants evaluate these three wines in three different conditions. The three wines were first evaluated after blind tasting, then after examination of the bottle with no tasting, and finally after examination of the bottle and tasting. After the evaluation of each chardonnay, participants were asked to submit a written bid. To avoid endowment effects and strategic behaviors, participants were informed that only two situations (that is two wines in two information conditions) would be randomly selected and become effective. We then show : 1) Willingness to pay for Burgundy is greater in all the experimental situations, but much less in the blind tasting. 2) Appellation of Origin is greatly valorised in the visual situation by a French panel, and the Gallo’s wine is significantly underestimated. Willingness to pay for burgundy is quite different between the three experimental situations. The trade-off between label and taste goes in favour of the label. 3) There does not exist an explicit hierarchy between wines (heterogeneity of tastes and no vertical differentiation) 1 bazoche@ivry.inra.fr; combris@ivry.inra.fr; giraud@ivry.inra.fr
ABSTRACT Until recently, fresh fruits such as pears were provided to markets as generic products.... more ABSTRACT Until recently, fresh fruits such as pears were provided to markets as generic products. However, these products are now differentiated by cultivars, origins and appearances, as well as by companies’ production and processing methods. Therefore, we observe a lot of denominations of origin, retailers’ and private labels in order to signal the differentiation to the consumers, who are often willing to pay large price premiums for products with specific attributes. Indeed the value consumers put on fruits depends on the degree of product-information that are available to them and this information derives mainly from tasting and from the label of the products. In this paper, we used an experimental auction to investigate how quality attributes information affects consumers’ willingness to pay for different types of pears, particularly choosing the Portuguese "Rocha" pear variety. The BDM auction mechanism was combined with sensory analyses in order to develop an integrated approach to evaluate product attributes. The main results show that information on the products’ characteristics related to food safety instantly influences consumers’ willingness to pay. However, it appears that sensory intrinsic attributes related to taste finally beats the guarantee of food safety in driving the buying behaviour.
[fre] A partir d'une analyse secondaire des données d'une enquête sur les repas des Fra... more [fre] A partir d'une analyse secondaire des données d'une enquête sur les repas des Français, cette étude a permis de mieux cerner certains aspects de la différenciation sociale des comportements alimentaires notamment en matière de caractéristiques des repas, et de type d'aliment utilisé selon les circonstances de consommation. [eng] Characteristics of meals of social groups - From an analysis of
Rencontres Autour Des Recherches Sur Les Ruminants, 2003
A partir des differentes sources statistiques disponibles, ce texte analyse les grandes tendances... more A partir des differentes sources statistiques disponibles, ce texte analyse les grandes tendances de la consommation de viande et de produits laitiers en France depuis le debut des annees cinquante. Le taux de croissance de la consommation diminue regulierement tout au long de la periode et une tendance a la saturation se manifeste clairement au cours des annees quatre-vingt. Parallelement, le developpement de l'information nutritionnelle entraine des inflechissements durables de la demande en particulier pour la viande de boeuf. L'heterogeneite des comportements des consommateurs est tres forte, mais des differences systematiques en fonction des caracteristiques des menages continuent de se manifester. Ces differences, en particulier celles liees au revenu, a l'âge et au niveau d'education, permettent de faire des hypotheses sur les evolutions futures de la demande.
L’alimentation et l’environnement sont au coeur du developpement durable. Toutefois, des resultat... more L’alimentation et l’environnement sont au coeur du developpement durable. Toutefois, des resultats de travaux experimentaux, conduits par des chercheurs du departement SAE2 de l’INRA sur la perception des consommateurs et leur disposition a payer pour des produits respectant certains criteres du developpement durable, montrent que la capacite de transmission de l’information au consommateur par les labels est imparfaite. De fait, afin de promouvoir les pratiques liees au developpement durable nous montrons que l’utilisation d’autres instruments, comme les taxes et les standards de qualite, pourrait etre envisagee.
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Papers by Pierre Combris