MARKETING OF CUCUMBER IN EDO SOUTH AGRO-ECOLOGICAL ZONE

ABSTRACT

This research studied the marketing of cucumber in Edo South Agro-Ecological Zone of Edo State, Nigeria. The specific objectives were to describe the socioeconomic characteristic of cucumber marketers in the study area, describe the marketing channel of cucumber marketing in the study area, estimate the marketing margins of wholesalers and retailers, and investigate the effect of the component of marketing margin on marketing margin in the study area, describe the market structure and assess the performance of cucumber marketing in the study area, evaluate and compare the profitability of cucumber marketing of wholesalers and retailers in the study area and identify the constraints faced by cucumber marketers in the study area. A multistage sampling technique was used in selecting 100 respondents for the study. The first stage involved the purposive selection of 2 LGAs in Edo South Agroecological zone, which were Oredo and Ikpoba Okha. The second stage was the purposive selection of 2 markets each from the selected LGAs. The third stage involved the randomly sampling of 20 marketers from each market and 10 marketers each from community outside the markets. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics such as mean, frequencies and percentages, net profit, Gini coefficient and multiple linear regression. The result revealed that majority of the wholesalers (91.1%) and retailers (74.5%) were male, with an average age of 32 years and 28 years respectively. The result also revealed that majority of the wholesalers (77.8%) and retailers (69.1%) were married. The average household size for wholesalers and retailers in the study area was 5 persons and 4 persons respectively. The average marketing experience for was 9 years and 6 years for wholesalers and retailers respectively. The result further showed that 53.0% of the respondents sourced their cucumber supply from wholesalers, with 61.0% selling only to the final consumers.