Stakeholder perceptions on key package design attributes to promote user-friendly fertilizer products

Abstract

Facilitation of an intelligible use of a product by its users by self-revealing essential information of it, which are ‘searchable’, ‘experienced’ and/or ‘credence’ in nature, is of paramount importance in a market promotion. Hence, this study was aimed to decide the key design attributes of an appropriate container to promote the eco-friendly technologies (EFTs) developed through a multi objective, multi-phase program of research targeting paddy sector in Sri Lanka. The 7Ps stipulated under the concept of ‘Marketing Mix’ was applied to assess market considerations according to the conceptual framework of promotion of EFT products by understanding stakeholder perceptions and market conditions related to the fertilizer marketing in Sri Lanka. Direct stakeholders attached to fertilizer supply chain were contacted by both “Online” and “Face-to-Face” interviews (n=108), supported by a structured pre-piloted questionnaire, to collect data during February/March 2022. The Choice Experiment was designed to characterize those package attributes of “Label design”, “Labelling method”, “Package shape”, “Package size”, “Technical guidelines”, and “Standards”. The Conditional Logistic Regression model was applied to derive the values of Marginal Willingness-to Pay (MWTP). package shape of the container, size of more than 5kg, national standardization and availability of guidelines attributes were significant at 95% confidence level, While the ‘Packaging’ “Package Size”’ and “Standards” attributes came up with the highest MWTP values (i.e., Rs. 38.00 and Rs. 32.40). Analysis outcomes emphasized that those stakeholders involved with marketing of fertilizer, yet, on the belief that sensible attributes associated with ‘economics’ and ‘marketing’ are valued over and above the ‘environmental’ and ‘esthetics’ (e.g.: health, safety, pollution, waste etc.) as they deal with plant nutrients along the Agri-food supply chain