Consumer Attitudes to Potatoes and Possible Differentiation Paths of the Commodity - the Case of Sweden

Potato has since long been one of the main carbohydrate products in Swedish food consumption. The last thirty years, however, the Swedish consumption has decreased from approximately 90 to 50 kilograms per person and year. The potato has lost market shares to substitutes like pasta, rice and various sorts of bread, one often stated explanation being an increase in convenience food. While other vegetables, like tomato, pepper and lettuce, have become highly differentiated during the last decade, the potato has remained an undifferentiated commodity, mainly associated with low price, unstable quality and low status. This paper aims at describing Swedish consumers' attitudes to potato. In our study, 202 respondents were interviewed. The results show that Swedish consumers prefer to buy unpackaged potatoes. However earlier studies show that the consumers tend to say they prefer unpackaged fruit and vegetables to packaged ones, but in a real buying situation, given the choice, they picked the packed ones. The reasons for not buying packaged potatoes were that the existing packages are too big, sealed paper bags. Our study indicates that the range of potato varieties could be increased in shop; both as packaged and unpackaged products. Packaging could provide benefits to the consumers, like improved printed information and additional features such as packages prepared for cooking in microwave ovens or even semi-prepared potatoes. Changes in consumer behaviour and a rapidly changing market for fruits and vegetables (potato included) put the potato growers and wholesalers in a new situation where it will be necessary to transform the potato from a low status bulk product into a differentiated product meeting consumer demands.