Chapter 4. Expert Survey
Chapter 4. Summary of Expert Survey
Summary
This chapter reports a summary of findings from a survey conducted in early 2013 of beef industry experts, which asked them to assess the impact of a variety of factors in beef consumption. Survey respondents were also asked to assess how feasible it is for the beef industry to influence these factors. Key findings include:
· Overall, beef industry experts hold similar views with respect to the key factors affecting both ground beef and beef steak consumption.
· Beef industry experts indicate that Food Safety and Product Quality and Form have the greatest impact on beef demand and are factors which are the most feasible for the industry to influence. Conversely, industry experts indicate that Nutrition, Sustainability, and Social Aspects have the least impact on beef demand and the industry has very limited ability to influence these factors. Price is viewed as being an important factor, but it’s a factor that experts feel the industry has limited ability to influence, relative to most of the other aggregate demand factors examined.
There is more agreement among beef industry experts on the relative importance of demand drivers than there is on which of these drivers the industry can most readily address. Aggregated responses from the survey of beef industry experts tend to mask the heterogeneity among beef industry experts views regarding both impact and feasibility of influencing beef demand factors. Overall, in all but one case (Product Quality and Form, ground beef), the dispersion of feasibility rankings was equal to or greater than the dispersion of impact rankings indicating that there is less consensus regarding the feasibility of the industry influencing the evaluated factors than on the impact they exert on beef demand.
· Over one-third of survey respondents believe that it is at least somewhat feasible for the industry to influence all 7 broadly characterized demand factors. In assessing beef steak over 70% view Product Quality and Form, Food Safety, Social Aspects, and Sustainability as feasible to be influenced. While Price and Nutrition are viewed by at least 25% of experts in both product assessments as infeasible to be influenced, at least 20% provided neutral feasibility assessments.
· Beef industry experts hold a notably favorable view regarding Product Quality and Form as a very important beef demand determinant that the industry can influence. For example, in assessing ground beef and beef steak, 69% and 81% of respondents, respectively, consider Product Quality and Form to be feasible to influence and to have a positive impact on demand. As a result, the industry should make addressing issues falling within this broad area a high priority.
Introduction and Purpose
The survey was targeted toward a specific group of identified experts. Specific expertise areas that we targeted and sent the survey to included:
1. Authors residing in the United States who published at least one refereed scholarly journal article over the last 20 years in a U.S. peer-reviewed journal were selected from the first 600 articles that populated Google Scholar searches for topics “beef demand”, “beef quality”, or “beef nutrition”. Authors of articles focused on topics judged not relevant to the specific issue being searched were deleted from the sample. Authors who could not be identified with a specific employer or for whom a current e-mail address could not be located were also deleted. Finally, deceased authors or authors who could not be uniquely identified were also deleted from the sample. After eliminating duplicates across the three separate searches, this process yielded a total of 364 experts as survey candidates.
2. A group comprising livestock and meat market experts who are members of the Livestock Marketing Information Center (LMIC) Technical Advisory Committee or the LMIC’s Industry Outlook Conference attendee list were also collected. This list resulted in a total of 514 experts identified as survey candidates.
3. Combining experts from the above noted sources and removing duplicates produced a total of 801 industry experts, which comprised our survey sample.
We designed our survey to collect expert opinions regarding future determinants of beef demand in the United States. Survey questions focused on projecting per capita consumption or demand over the next 10 years. This forward-looking, domestic focus was a central theme of our surveys. To collect the information from experts regarding future beef demand drivers and the feasibility of influencing those drivers, we utilized four similar, but different survey versions. Two versions each focused on ground beef and beef steak consumption, respectively, facilitating a comparison of similarities and differences across these products. Moreover, two versions contained questions focused solely on the impact of specific issues on demand, whereas the other two surveys contained parallel questions focused on the feasibility of the industry influencing the impact of these same issues. By examining expert opinions regarding both impact and feasibility of influencing these factors, we gain unique insight into the combination of two dimensions essential to guiding future beef demand. This two-dimensional approach was motivated by recent research (Cross, Rigby, and Edwards-Jones, 2012; Erdem and Rigby, 2013). Moreover, the beef industry must recognize both the probable impact of, and feasibility to influence, key factors in making strategic decisions to build beef demand.
On February 15, 2013 e-mail invitations were sent to 801 identified beef industry experts requesting them to complete our survey. Each respondent received a hyperlink to a specific survey version, which was randomly allocated to them. An e-mail reminder was sent on February 20th to experts who had not yet responded to the initial request. On March 1st the survey was closed providing the responses summarized in this report. Table 1 summarizes the response rate achieved across the four survey versions. The overall response rate was 23%.
Procedure and Results
The expert survey was conducted using SurveyMonkey. A summary report is provided in an Appendix indicating the response frequency for each individual survey question across the four different survey versions. These reports provide the text of each question, indicate how responses varied across the four survey versions, and also provide comments submitted by respondents. Although our analysis and discussion focus on summary relationships between expert views on both impact and feasibility aspects of the different factors and issues, we have included the appendices as a reference for details on responses to individual questions
Figures 1 and 2 provide summary statistics of expert opinions in impact and feasibility space of the 7 broad factors examined in the beef steak and ground beef surveys, respectively (questions 1 and 4). Narrowly, given the ordinal nature of underlying survey questions these figures include median values (solid blue dots) with upper and lower boundaries indicating first and third quartiles (square green and purple bars) of response distributions. These figures present zero-centered values (0=average of impact/feasibility median values and values different from zero measure magnitude of distance from the average ranging from -3 = least impact/feasibility to +3 = most impact/feasibility) in impact and feasibility space. Accordingly factors plotted above 0 on the y-axis are viewed to have greater feasibility to influence and those above 0 on the x-axis have greater impact on beef consumption. Factors located in the upper right quadrant could be strong candidates to place highly on the industry’s priority list when allocating scarce resources toward demand enhancement. This upper right quadrant contains factors that, combined, have the greatest expected impact on beef (steak or ground beef) consumption over the next ten years and the highest perceived ability to influence these factors. Conversely, factors in the lower left quadrant (low impact and low feasibility to influence) are factors that deserve comparably less priority by the industry. Factors with median rankings falling in the other two quadrants are those that have a divergence between expected impact on demand and the industry’s ability to influence that impact. Furthermore, factors with quartile values falling in a quadrant different from median values are characterized by substantial dispersion in expert views reflecting less consensus than factors having both median and quartile values in a sole quadrant. While Figures 1 and 2 provide a conceptually appealing summary in impact and feasibility space, to keep them “clean” they do not provide specific numeric estimates. Tables 2 and 3 provide these summary statistics and can be used in conjunction with Figures 1 and 2 to understand the collective expert feedback obtained.
Comparing Figures 1 and 2 some subtle differences can be identified although, overall, respondents held similar views in the beef steak and ground beef assessments. In both assessments, Food Safety and Product Quality and Form have the combination of median values indicating the highest level of impact and feasibility to influence. Conversely, Nutrition, Sustainability, and Social Aspects combine to have median values indicating the least impact and least feasible to influence. Health is the most neutral factor overall for both impact and feasibility, though for ground beef the feasibility to impact appears slightly better than steak. Perhaps lower fat ground beef offerings influence the health potential for ground beef relative to steak. Finally, Price is viewed as having a substantial impact (only factor with median impact value of 3), but it’s not a factor that the industry has a lot of influence over, relative to most of the other aggregate demand factors examined.
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Chapter 4. Expert Survey
Figure 1. Location of broad demand factors within impact and feasibility space, beef steak version (Medians and quartile ranges; Impact N=89, Feasibility N=81).
Figure 2. Location of broad demand factors within impact and feasibility space, ground beef version (Medians and quartile ranges; Impact N=88, Feasibility N=81).
Impact / Feasibility
Median / Quartile Range / 25th Percentile / 75th Percentile / Median / Quartile Range / 25th Percentile / 75th Percentile
Price / 3 / 1 / 2 / 3 / -1 / 4 / -3 / 1
Product Quality and Form / 2 / 2 / 0 / 2 / 2 / 2 / 1 / 3
Nutrition / -1 / 2 / -2 / 0 / -1 / 3 / -3 / 0
Health / 0 / 2 / -1 / 1 / -1 / 2 / -2 / 0
Food Safety / 1 / 3 / -1 / 2 / 2 / 3 / 0 / 3
Social Aspects / -2 / 2 / -2 / 0 / 0 / 3 / -2 / 1
Sustainability / -2 / 3 / -3 / 0 / 0 / 3 / -2 / 1
a Presented values are re-ordered from original survey formatting such that higher values reflect more impact or feasibility.
To facilitate Figures 1 and 2, presented values are zero-centered.
Table 3. Ground Beef, Impact and Feasibility Ranking Summary Statistics (Impact N=88, Feasibility N=81)Impact / Feasibility
Median / Quartile Range / 25th Percentile / 75th Percentile / Median / Quartile Range / 25th Percentile / 75th Percentile
Price / 3 / 1 / 2 / 3 / -1 / 4 / -3 / 1
Product Quality and Form / 1 / 3 / -1 / 2 / 2 / 2 / 1 / 3
Nutrition / -1 / 2 / -2 / 0 / -1 / 3 / -3 / 0
Health / 0 / 2 / -1 / 1 / 0 / 3 / -2 / 1
Food Safety / 2 / 2 / 1 / 3 / 2 / 2 / 1 / 3
Social Aspects / -2 / 2 / -3 / -1 / -1 / 3 / -2 / 1
Sustainability / -2 / 2 / -3 / -1 / -1 / 2 / -2 / 0
a Presented values are re-ordered from original survey formatting such that higher values reflect more impact or feasibility.
To facilitate Figures 1 and 2, presented values are zero-centered.
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Chapter 4. Expert Survey
While assessing median values is important, it masks underlying diversity in opinions among experts. Accordingly, dispersion, as indicated by quartile ranges (25th and 75th percentile range) is also assessed. In Figures 1 and 2 the quartile ranges (QR) appear as “error bars” to readily present relative dispersion in views across both impact and feasibility space among the 7 factors. To appreciate the level of dispersion, recall that these zero-centered values range from a low of -3 to a high of +3. Accordingly, factors with QR of 2 or more are indicative of significant diversity among experts’ views. Price is the only factor with an impact QR less than 2 (Tables 2 and 3), with all other factors (including feasibility of influencing Price) having a QR of 2 or higher. Taken as a whole, this indicates significant heterogeneity among the views experts hold regarding both impact and feasibility of influencing beef demand factors. This is not surprising given the 10-year forward-looking nature of our survey questions and diversity in backgrounds, areas of expertise, etc. within our respondent sample.
Comparing the QR of feasibility and impact rankings makes clear there is less of a consensus on the feasibility of the industry to influence the 7 evaluated factors than there is on impact. In every case except one (Product Quality and Form, ground beef) the feasibility QR is equal to or higher than the impact QR (Tables 2 and 3). This can be seen visually in Figures 1 and 2 by noting how the vertical “error bars” reflecting feasibility QRs are generally wider than the horizontal bars based upon impact QRs. In the case of Price, this difference is substantial as the impact QR is 1 and the feasibility QR is 4 in both ground beef and beef steak assessments. Examined in conjunction with factors’ median values, this indicates experts agree that Price is a critical driver of beef consumption, but significantly disagree regarding the industry’s relative ability to influence beef price. This is also highlighted in Figures 1 and 2 where Price falls into either quadrant 2 (more feasible/more impact) or quadrant 3 (less feasible/more impact) when considering QR values. An opposite pattern emerges for views regarding Product Quality and Form in the case of ground beef as impact QR exceeds the feasibility QR. In Figure 2 Product Quality and Form resides in either quadrant 1 (more feasible/less impact) or quadrant 2 (more feasible/more impact), when considering QR values.