Consumer preferences regarding national and EU quality labels for cheese, ham and honey: The case of Slovenia

The purpose of this paper is to investigate consumer preferences in the Slovenian context with regard to cheese, ham and honey labelled with the national and EU protected designation of origin (PDO) indication and the protected geographical indication (PGI) associated with price and origin.

An online survey with a representative sample of the Slovenian population of 650 consumers was conducted. Consumer preferences were estimated using choice-based conjoint analysis.

The findings show that price is the most powerful driver of consumer preferences for cheese and honey, whereas it is origin for ham, which proved to be the most strongly desired “Slovenian” food product of all items analysed. Label is the least preferable attribute for all three products considered. Cheese, ham and honey bearing the national PDO and PGI labels were more desired than products carrying the EU PDO and PGI labels. The study findings also show the main statistically significant differences in the age and gender of consumers.

The biggest limitation is that the study focused on certain labels only, related to quality, and origin in particular.

This result highlights the need to extend and intensify promotional and communication activities to increase consumer preferences for the national and EU PDO- and PGI-labelled cheeses, ham and honey.

This study contributes to relevant literature by presenting the results regarding consumer preferences for the EU and national quality labels for different food categories in Slovenia, which has no tradition in using the EU quality labels.