Olive Oil Preferences Among Japanese Consumers: Best‐Worst Scaling on Country of Origin and Consumer Heterogeneity

The study aims to investigate Japanese consumers' preferences for olive oil (OO), focusing on how important the country of origin (COO) is compared to 12 other product attributes and how these preferences vary among consumers. As the first academic study, we ranked the OO attributes in Asia using a best-worst scaling to determine the relative importance of COO and examined consumer heterogeneity using the latent class logit model. The study finds that COO is not the highest priority for Japanese consumers, similar to other minor OO-producing countries. The characteristics of consumers who value quality and price are also similar in Japan and other countries. However, unlike other countries, the study identifies specific attributes consistently prioritized across three different consumer segments. Such uniform OO preference suggests that consumer diversity in Japan may be limited, where OO consumption is not typical. This point is also related to the global determinants of OO consumption, so research on BWS in other Asian countries, the demand of OO is sharply growing, is needed. The development of these attributes in the study also provides a framework for future research in the region.