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The purpose of this paper is to investigate Spanish consumer preferences for several food-labelling schemes on semi-cured, pasteurised sheep milk cheese. In particular, the authors used three labels regulated by the European Union regulation (European organic logo, protected denomination of origin (PDO) and nutritional fat content), and the remaining four have been introduced to the European food market by private initiatives (local, carbon footprint, food miles and animal welfare).

A Best-Worst Discrete Choice approach was applied in Spain during Fall 2011 by administrating a survey to 549 consumers.

The results suggest that the most valued labels are the PDO, followed by the organic logo and the nutritional panel. The least valued are food-miles labelling and carbon foodprint labels, while local-origin labels and animal welfare are in the middle position.

This study is the first to value consumer preferences for cheese products bearing several public and private European food-labelling schemes since literature on consumer preferences for food labels has only dealt with a comparison of a few (two or at most three) food-labelling schemes. In addition, the added value of this paper is also the use of the BWC approach that has the advantage of providing the best way to discriminate the degree of importance given by respondents to each food labels by overcoming the problem of bias caused by differences in the use of rating scales.

The purpose of this paper is to assess consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for three different food claims on semi-cured, pasteurized sheep milk cheese. In particular, the authors used a health-related claim (the nutritional claim indicating a reduced fat content: “light”), a regional claim (“designation of origin – PDO”) and an organic claim (the European organic logo). Moreover, the authors investigated whether consumers’ personal characteristics could influence their WTP for those types of cheese.

A home-grown experimental auction was applied in Spain during Spring 2012. The authors opted to use the nth random price with repeated rounds and without price feedback.

The results show that consumers were willing to pay more for PDO cheese, followed by organic and light cheese. Moreover, respondents who were female, older and with a university-level education showed some environmental concerns, influencing their WTP for different cheeses.

Empirical evidence on consumers’ preferences for PDO, organic and nutritional claims, evaluated jointly, is lacking in Spain. Moreover, the home-grown auction has several merits in terms of real market simulation and consumer preference application.

In the 1960s, the Spanish diet was a typical example of the Mediterranean diet. However, in the 1990s, Spanish consumers have moved away from that pattern. This has been the result of many different changes over that period of time. It is important to know how a Mediterranean country moves from a considered healthy diet to another which is not so and the reasons behind that change. There might be a number of policy implications to reinforce food consumption habits which are not properly taken into consideration when a country goes through economic development. Nowadays, public institutions in Spain are concerned about changing diets. They provide information and encourage the appropriate education to achieve those aims. Among other things, they try to promote typical regional products of high quality as well as to avoid unhealthy food habits, by providing nutritional educational programmes at schools, jointly with other policies.

In this paper, market values for most of wine attributes are measured through the estimation of a hedonic price function, which relates the price of a wine to its various attributes. As more expensive wines are also associated with higher recognition of wine attributes, results also reflect consumers’ valuation of wine attributes. Data used in this paper comes from a wine catalogue in which only price categories are available. As independent variables, the following wine attributes have been considered: region of production, the year vintage, grape variety, alcoholic content and expert quality ratings. Due to the nature of available data, the hedonic price function has been estimated in the form of a Multinomial Logit model. Results indicate that the two first variables (region of production and the year vintage) are the main market price determinants while grape variety and the alcoholic contents are not significantly correlated with red wine prices.

The aim of this study is to analyse Millennial generation's preferences for wine attributes in two countries, one from the “New World” (USA) and the other from the “Old World” (Spain), in order to see whether they are different. Heterogeneity in attribute importance is investigated, with wine consumers classified into different segments according to attribute importance.

The Best‐Worst choice method was used with information obtained from a survey conducted in two cities of Spain and the USA (Zaragoza and Fayetteville), respectively. Then, attribute importance heterogeneity was modelled and consumers were classified with a latent class model.

The results indicate that American and Spanish Millennial consumers present some similarities but also some differences in wine preferences. While Millennial consumers in the USA attributed more importance to “I tasted the wine previously”, Spanish Millennials ascribed more importance to the “designation of origin”. Moreover, heterogeneity in attribute importance in both countries was detected and five consumer segments were identified showing clear differences in terms of the importance attached to different wine attributes: “Traditionalists”, “Wine seekers”, “Label fans”, “Insecure” and “Price conscious”. These wine consumer segments could be characterized by traditional socio‐demographic profiles and only differed in wine consumer preferences.

The Best‐Worst method, used to compare wine consumers from the “New World” and the “Old World”, asks them to choose among hypothetical wines defined by a mix of traditional and novel attributes, according to previous studies.

The aim of the paper is to investigate the consumers' decision‐making process for organically produced foods in Italy.

A structural equation modelling approach has been used with information provided by a survey conducted in Italy (Naples).

Results indicate that consumer' attitudes towards organic food, in particular towards the health attribute and towards the environment are the most important factors that explain consumers' decision‐making process for organic food products. Moreover, it has been found that larger information on the organic food market, which drives to a higher consumers' organic food knowledge, is important because it positively influences consumers' attitudes towards organic food products. Finally, consumers who try to follow a healthy diet and balanced life are likely to have more positive attitudes towards organic food products and towards the environment, inducing a more likely intention to purchase organic foods.

Findings provide more evidence on consumers' underlying motivations to buy organic food to the already existing evidence in Europe to evaluate the future implementation of the recently approved Regulation (EC) no. 834/2007 of 28 June 2007 on organic production and labelling of organic products. In addition, empirical results would help local policy makers to establish appropriate market strategies to develop the future demand for these products.