Consumer proximity and knowledge about PDO cheeses
Proximité géographique et connaissance des fromages AOC chez les consommateurs. Le cas du Saint-Nectaire
Abstract
This paper studies purchase behavior and knowledge of PDO cheese consumers, according to their geographical proximity from a production area of PDO cheeses. Consumers from two regions recorded their cheese purchases; then their technical, semantic and geographical knowledge of cheeses was estimated with a questionnaire. K-means clustering and cross-tabulations show that PDO cheese consumers vary in two ways: the purchase quantities and frequencies are related to the geographical proximity, whereas they are independent from knowledge.