Marketing and Price Determinant Factors of Village Chicken Products: The Case of Western Zone of Tigray

Abstract

The survey was aimed at assessing village chicken marketing, price determinant factors and stakeholders involved in the supply chain of live chickens and eggs in western zone of Tigray. Multi stage sampling produres were employed to select weredas, sample kebeles and respondents in which three rural weredas were selected by purposive sampling technique; stratified purposive techniques were employed to select nine sample kebeles and purposive random sampling techniques were used to select a total of 385 respondents. Pretested structured questionnaire and focused group discussion were employed to generate data. Market outlets and marketing constraints were analyzed using descriptive statistics of SPSS 16. Kruskal- Wall’s test option of Non-parametric tests of SPSS 16 was employed to test proportion difference of each variable among the altitudes. Ranking index was employed to rank identified price determinant factors. Plumage color (1^st), body weight (2^nd), comb type (3^rd) and shank color (4^th) were the predominant factors that cause variability in the price of live chickens. Marketing of chicken products mainly constrained by poor infrastructure and lack of information. Producers, village collectors, retailers and consumers are stakeholders involved in the supply chain of live chickens whereas there is less involvement of wholesalers in the supply chain of eggs in addition to aforementioned actors. Overall, the participation of wholesalers in the supply chain of indigenous chicken products is almost none which in turn indicates the volume of transaction in the study area were small. Moreover, the demand of local chicken products increases with time but the supply of chicken product is still below the requirement because constraints related to marketing and productions make chicken productivity very low. There is a need to address the various constraints affecting the supply chain of indigenous chicken products through designing and implementing of environmentally friendly sustainable and holistic productivity improvement strategies in order to ensure sustainable improved chicken productivity and satisfy  the needs of actors  there by to improve food security of small scale farmers. Sustainability of holistic improvement strategy of chickens achieve only if preference of all actors involved in the supply chain of chicken products  and price determinant factors are incorporated in designing of the strategies. Further research on econometric analysis of the identified price determinant factors and value chain analysis of indigenous chicken products is required to identify roles of actors involved in the value chain.

Key words: Supply chain, Role of Stakeholders,   Price determinant factors