Abstract

A questionnaire survey was designed to gauge consumer interest in goat meat. The questionnaire was responded to by 98 households living in or near Tokyo. The main results of the survey are as follows. 1) Impression of goat meat; 61% of the respondents indicated that goat meat was ìnot common in their homeî. 2) Consumer experience; only 16% of the respondents had experience of eating goat meat and they felt goat meat is ìsmellyî(50%), ìtenderî(38%) and ìdeliciousî(31%). 3) The two main reasons why consumers have not eaten goat meat were ìlack of purchasing opportunityî(78%) and ìdonít feel like eating itî(18%). 4) Options to promote goat meat consumption; 52% of respondents who have not eaten goat meat were prepared to purchase if it was available in the supermarket at a reasonable price and if recipes were added with the meat package. 5) Reasons for people not purchasing goat meat included ìdislike of new meatî and ìpity for the goatî. These results show that goat meat can be promoted to the Japanese households as ìa new productî if the price is reasonable and recipes are added to the package. However, a considerable number of market strategies need to be implemented to achieve the acceptance of goat meat by Japanese consumers.

AJ, Litherland, DL Layton, CJ Boom, TL Knight, M Hyslop, MG Lambert, and TL Cook

Proceedings of the New Zealand Society of Animal Production, Volume 64, Hamilton, 197-202, 2004