Consumption Preferences for Dairy Products in an Urban Setting: A Study of Sokoto Metropolis

Although there were studies conducted on dairy product consumption in Nigeria, there were no notable studies on the characteristics of consumers who exhibit preferences for either the traditional or the pre-packaged dairy products. Consequently, this study seeks to find out the socioeconomic determinants of why a household prefers a pre-packaged dairy product or the traditional dairy products. The study area is Sokoto metropolis. The metropolis was grouped into four clusters, namely; Sokoto main, GRAs, Resident community and Peri-urban whereby 71 respondents were respectively selected from each cluster on a random basis. Data were collected with the aid of a structured food frequency questionnaire (FFQ). Descriptive and multinomial logistic regression tools were used to analyse the data. The result shows the mean age to be 39, with over 80% being married. Over 50% of the respondents have attained a tertiary education. Meanwhile, 62% of the respondents were middle to high income earners. The multinomial logit results showed that the  preferences for the traditional dairy products was positively determined by the location variable (at the 1% level), while education and income level of the household heads were negatively significant  at the 5% and 1% levels respectively. Meanwhile, the preferences for the pre-packaged dairy products was negatively influenced by the marital status of the household heads (at the 5% level), while the location and ethnicity of the household heads were positively significant at the 1% level respectively. Considering that there is a clear preference for the pre-packaged dairy products over that of the traditional dairy products by the highly educated and high income earners, it is hereby recommended that the processing of the traditional dairy products should be modernized, resulting in its production in a pre-packaged form acceptable to these categories of consumers.