Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Meat Science journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/meatsci Consumers use of quality cues for meat purchase: Research trends and future pathways Joshua Aboah a, ⁎ , Nic Lees b a Department of Global Value Chains & Trade, Faculty of Agribusiness & Commerce, Lincoln University, P O Box 85084, Lincoln 7647, Christchurch, New Zealand b Agribusiness and Economics Research Unit, Faculty of Agribusiness & Commerce, Lincoln University, PO Box 85084, Lincoln 7647, Christchurch, New Zealand ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Network analysis Comparative analysis Quality cue Extrinsic Intrinsic ABSTRACT This paper aims to explore the trends in the research design used for assessing important quality cues in the meat industry and determine the most important quality cues that consumers use in their purchasing decisions. A Journal Article Network Analysis and non-parametric comparative analyses were used to collate the studies and analyse their findings respectively. Results indicate a predominate use of point-of-purchase surveys to collect data and consumers' stated preference to evaluate the important quality cues. At an aggregated analytical level, the five most important quality cues (country of origin, food safety certification, price, production system and quality certification labels) are extrinsic and relate to credence attributes. However, different rankings of important quality cues are obtained at a disaggregated analytical level based on meat type. The paper proposes that ex- ploring the interconnection between meat quality cues and how they influence consumers in different market segments based on the value proposition of the retailer as a foreseeable future research pathway. 1. Introduction Meat consumption has been part of human culture for millennia and historically has been driven by the pleasurable experience of eating meat and its high nutritional value. However, animal production is now faced with increasing ethical concerns regarding animal rights and welfare (Miranda-de La Lama et al., 2017; Nocella, Hubbard, & Scarpa, 2010). Furthermore, animal production systems, particularly confined animal feeding operations, are identified as critical environment im- pactors (Lusk, Nilsson, & Foster, 2007), and there is increasing research linking red meat consumption to negative health impacts (Wolk, 2017). Consequently, consumers, nowadays, make purchase decisions based on quality cues they identify as being correlated to both experi- ence and credence attributes. Experience quality cues such as taste and tenderness can be confirmed at the time of consumption whereas cre- dence attributes related to animal production, and health concerns cannot be verified by the consumer even after the product is consumed (Loureiro & Umberger, 2007). Consumers use quality cues, both intrinsic and extrinsic, to aid in their purchasing decisions. These quality cues act as informational sti- muli, and they can be predetermined by the consumer (Steenkamp, 1990). Cues linked with meat are important in the communication with consumers (Nocella et al., 2010), and serve as signals for consumers to aid in their search for food products (Van Loo, Caputo, Nayga, Meullenet, & Ricke, 2011). A diversity of quality cues has been iden- tified to influence meat consumers' purchasing decisions via different research designs. The present paper aims to explore the trends in the research designs that have been used to assess important quality cues in the meat in- dustry and to determine the most important quality cues that con- sumers use in their meat purchasing decisions at aggregated and dis- aggregated analytical levels. To achieve these objectives, this paper seeks to answer these research questions: (i) how are the studies that examine important quality cues for meat purchases designed? (ii) which are the most important meat quality cues (both intrinsic and extrinsic) reported in the literature? (iii) Does the perceived importance of quality cues differ across meat type? 2. Materials and methods This paper adopts a network analysis of journal articles (i.e. Journal Article Network Analysis) to collate relevant literature for comparative analyses. Data on research design, meat quality attributes, findings on important quality cues that consumers use in their meat purchasing decisions are extracted from the collated journal articles. The retrieved data are the bases for the non-parametric comparative analyses to identify the most important meat quality cues. The Journal Article Network Analysis (JANA) procedures and the non-parametric https://doi.org/10.1016/j.meatsci.2020.108142 Received 7 February 2020; Received in revised form 7 April 2020 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: joshua.aboah@lincolnuni.ac.nz (J. Aboah). Meat Science 166 (2020) 108142 Available online 09 April 2020 0309-1740/ © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T