Journal of Economics and Sustainable Development www.iiste.org ISSN 2222-1700 (Paper) ISSN 2222-2855 (Online) Vol.3, No.13, 2012 143 Assessment on Economic Support and Value of Hygiene of Butcher shops among Beef Consumers in Tanzania. Salim Nandonde 1* Elibariki Msuya 1 Louis Mtenga 2 1. Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness, Sokoine University of Agriculture, P.O Box 3007, Morogoro, Tanzania 2. Department of Animal Science and Production, Sokoine University of Agriculture, P.O. Box 3014, Morogoro, Tanzania *Email of the corresponding author: snandonde@yahoo.com The research is financed by German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD_A/09/04474) Abstract The study was conducted to reveal consumer support to hygiene of butcher shop using a linear restriction approach to beef retailers’ sales income; and direct evaluation through choice based experiment. The average retailer’s sales income as an aggregate consumer expense on beef was realized to be affected by hygienic appearance for building, serving-storage equipment and attendants (p=005). Consumer choice preference to hygiene was positive (p<0.001) and they were willing to pay more for hygiene than the beef intrinsic attributes (p=0.05). It was concluded therefore that consumer expenses and choices for beef is motivated by hygiene. Retailers should be encouraged to improve the hygienic standard of butcher shops as a consumer requests besides abiding to rules and regulations. Key words: conjoint analysis, consumer, hygiene, income, linear restriction, retailing 1. INTRODUCTION Retailing is an important market section in beef value chain whereby the aggregate consumer expense on beef starts to be realized through retailer’s income. This is due to the general assumption that beef retailer’s income is the consumer expenses on beef, and that improving beef retailer’s income would nourish the value chain by having positive income effect to other players down the chain including beef cattle farmers. Most of the factors that influence beef retailer’s income from a given outlet such that volume sales, price and location are considered to be subjective to retailer whereby the market and consumer related forces are left to take its own course (Lusk and Cevallos, 2004). Unfortunately, the quality of an outlet such that of butcher shop which accounts and considered as hygienic signal to consumer is mandatory under appropriate authorities in many countries including Tanzania whereby the Tanzania Food and Drugs Authority (TFDA) is a responsible authority (URT 2006a; URT 2006b; Chanda et al. 2010). Hence, the effort to adhere and improving quality of butcher shop is largely based on authoritative penalties such as denial of quality compliance certificate which ultimately ends up to non-launching or closing of business if it was operating (Al-Kandari & Jukes 2012). This approach is relatively difficult to work in most developing countries due to various problems such as the out-rich and capacity limitation of quality enforcements authorities among others (Nguz 2007; Chanda et al. 2010; Haileselassie et al. 2012). Under these circumstances, improving quality of butcher shop which requires substantial capital investments will be less emphasized and probably ignored by retailers themselves unless they realize joint support from consumers that brings some economic benefit out of such investment. Economic effect per suasion based on retailers’ sales income may serve the purpose to reduce the fear of risk taking on capital investments to improve the butcher shops infrastructures and indirectly reflect the support of beef consumers who are the main clients as compare to the authoritative official’s orders. According to Dawnay and Shah (2005), consumer behaviour had relatively more reflection to direct support for attributes of importance than solely relying on neoclassical economic assumption of “rational consumer”. Fulfilment of authoritative demand for butcher shops being at relatively more hygienic appearance is important but its outcome might depend on consumer behavioural support with respect to extent of valuing hygiene among other attributes. While beef and related market in developed world has substantial understand to consumer behaviour there is