Is it Food Quality or Quantity that Responds to Changing Income?
In: Applied economic perspectives and policy, Band 33, Heft 2, S. 205-221
ISSN: 2040-5804
AbstractSince the early 1990s, the retail market for leafy green vegetables has been divided between largely unprocessed products and bagged salads. The latter embody kitchen labor and economize on storage costs, in effect offering consumers convenience as a product attribute. Using time‐series retail purchase data, this paper shows that changes in income immediately influence how much convenience consumers of leafy greens purchase. There is no statistical evidence that total quantity of leafy greens purchased responds to short‐run changes in income. Hence, consumers appear to adjust to income changes by choosing food quality rather than quantity.