Healthier foods in perspective: What drives garlic purchase decisions and consumption in urban South-West Nigeria?

Abstract

Abstract Although consumer demand for food products with more health functions has stimulated expansion of a number of food industries in the past years, not much is known about drivers of market participation and consumption of such foods in Africa, and Nigeria in particular. Consequently, the study examined factors influencing purchase decision and consumption-expenditure on garlic in South-West Nigeria. Descriptive statistics and the Heckman selection model were employed for data analysis. Results show that more than 70.0% of the respondent households became aware of the health benefits of garlic through media, friends/family and health workers, with more than 75.0% consuming garlic in raw and processed forms. The results of the Heckman selection model indicated that sex (p<0.05) and awareness of household head about the health benefits of garlic (p<0.01) substantially enhanced decisions to consume garlic while household income (p<0.01), household size (p<0.01), educational status (p<0.1) and occupation of the household head (p<0.1) significantly influenced consumption-expenditure. The study recommends public education programmes on the health benefits of garlic, efforts to enhance access to formal education and improvement in household income as strategies that could stimulate and raise garlic consumption. Our findings hold enormous implications for the sustainability of the garlic market in terms of research and product development as it relates to the forms in which consumers prefer to consume garlic and strategies for spreading knowledge about its health benefits in order to achieve greater demand in the country.