Influence of Label Information on Consumer Acceptability of Tea in Iran

Abstract

This article studies consumers' acceptability of tea. One way analysis of variance is applied to ascertain if the difference between two levels of information (first level, unpackaged and unlabeled tea; second level, packaged and labeled tea) is statistically different from zero. A double censored Tobit model is then applied in two steps: first, estimation of the influence of tea characteristics (origin and brand) on consumers' hedonic valuation of tea; and second, estimation of the influence of individual traits of consumers on their tea preference by adding a second level of information to evaluate to what extent the information conveyed—packaging and labeling, in particular—can change the result of the first step. The result indicates that packaging and labeling had a greater positive effect on liking tea than did other types of information. Moreover, the influence of origin changed significantly when a second level of information was added to the tea sample.

Keywords:

• acceptability
• Tobit
• packing
• labeling
• origin