CONSUMER PREFERENCES FOR TABLE OLIVES IN TIRANA

Table olive production sector is undergoing rapid changes, as the government is undertaking an ambitious program supporting the expansion of olive grove plantations. Despite the increase in domestic production, import of table olive is still high, due to constraints in quantity and quality of domestically supplied olives. In the context of import substitution strategy, embraced by producers and policy-makers, it is important to analyze the consumer preferences for table olives. The objective of this paper is to segment the table olive market according to preferences for table olives attributes applying Conjoint Choice Experiment (CCE) and Latent Class Analysis to collect and analyze the data. The research results show a strong consumer preference for domestic table olives whereas preferences for other attributes vary between consumer groups.