ABSTRACT
Severe price hike in agricultural commodities creates inflationary pressures, impacting negatively on the wellbeing of poor consumers especially in developing, and food importing countries that spent higher share of their limited income on food. This research was undertaken to analyze price variation of poultry meat among markets in Benin metropolis, Edo State, Nigeria.
To achieve this, the specific objective was to; describe the socio-economic characteristics of poultry meat marketers, Estimate the price of poultry meat in markets of Benin Metropolis, Examine the price variation of poultry meat in markets in Benin Metropolis, Determine the transportation cost between markets in Benin Metropolis. A two-stage sampling procedure was used to select 85 respondents from four markets in the study area. The data collected were analyzed using both descriptive statistics (which were mean, frequency counts. Percentages and standard deviation)
The results of the descriptive statistics showed that the average age of respondents in the study area was 49 years with 89.41% of the respondents being married with an average household size of 5 persons. The result also revealed that the average marketing experience of marketers was 11 years with an average of 7 visits per week to the market. The result also showed the highest cost of transportation between markets was from Santana to Uselu market with an average of ₦600, the lowest cost of transportation was from New Benin to Oba Market. Further results showed that in markets of Benin Metropolis, Oba market experienced a high variation in price of chicken meat with a co-efficient of variation of 1.25 and New Benin experienced the least variation with co-efficient of variation 0.033. It also revealed that New Benin experienced high variation in price of turkey meat with a coefficient of variation of 0.044 and Santana experienced the lowest with a coefficient of variation of 0.015. A regression analysis was carried out and the result revealed that the difference in prices of poultry meat markets using Oba market as baseline was not significant.
The study concluded that the price of poultry meat had varied amongst markets in Benin Metropolis. However, the variation in prices was significantly low.
