Analysis Marketing Behavior of Honey in Oromia Regional State, Ethiopia

Abstract

Production of honey is the main marketable and profitable in the beekeeping sector of the study area. However, high production does not always imply higher profits. The key for the profitability of bee product is the existence of efficient market. The aim of the study was to present the honey marketing behavior in Jima and West shewa zones of Oromia region. The focus of the study was, to characterize the demand and supply pattern of honey production through evaluating structure-conduct-performance of honey marketing. The data were generated by individual interview from producers, traders, input suppliers, services, product processors, and consumers. Traders were categorized under whole sellers, collectors, retailers and tej makers. Producers were those produce honey since five years to date, but data depends only one year production. Purposive and stratified simple random sampling was employed to pick up total sample size of 132 honey producers, and for other marketing actors, snowball sampling was employed to contact 59 market participants:  21 traders, 30 consumers, 2 services, 3 input suppliers, and 3 processors. The data collected was analyzed using SCP model, SPSS and Microsoft Excel. From the result total honey supplied to market was 29,307.5 kg at 2016/17 production year, which was about 90.4% of total production. The result of SCP indicated that the structure of honey market in the study area characterized with an existence of oligopoly with four firms’ concentration ratio of 40.7%. The honey market conduct was inefficient in that some traders were price makers and the price was affected by individual firms. From marketing margin analysis it was observed that large profit was going to processors and variations in profit share across the actors was observed. Hence from the result of market structure, conduct and performance analysis it is possible to conclude that honey market in the study area is inefficient.

Keywords: Honey, Market structure, Market conduct, Market performance

DOI: 10.7176/JMCR/57-01

Publication date:June 30^th 2019