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 “not common in their home”. 2) Consumer experience; only 16% of the respondents had experience of eating goat meat and they felt goat meat is “smelly” (50%), “tender” (38%) and “delicious” (31%). 3) The two main reasons why consumers have not eaten goat meat were “lack of purchasing opportunity” (78%) and “don’t feel like eating it” (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 “dislike of new meat” and “pity for the goat”. These results show that goat meat can be promoted to the Japanese households as “a new product” 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.

T, Ozawa, N Lopez-Villalobos, and HT Blair

Proceedings of the New Zealand Society of Animal Production, Volume 64, Hamilton, 208-211, 2004