Abstract

Deginet Berhanu* and Aklilu Atinafu

Access to market and choice of a marketing outlet is one of the key ingredients to successful marketing of both agricultural and non-agricultural products. Though the study area has great potential of pineapple production, the farmers faced the marketing problems in choosing appropriate pineapple market outlets. This study was aimed at identifying determinants of market outlet choices of pineapple producing farmers in Aleta Chuko District of Sidama Region. Both qualitative and quantitative data were collected from primary and secondary sources. The Cross-sectional data were collected from a sample of 282 pineapple producing farmers. Descriptive statistics and Multinomial Logit model was used to analyze collected data. The result showed that, 64.5% of the total sample use formal private traders where 27.5% and 8.0% of respondents used informal private traders and cooperatives market outlets respectively. The parameter estimate of multinomial logistic regression model revealed that, the choice of both informal private traders and pineapple marketing cooperatives market outlets was significantly affected by age, education, access to market centre, access to market information, access to transportation service and access to credit service when compared to formal private traders category. In addition, the choice of pineapple marketing cooperatives outlet was significantly affected by amount of annual income compared to formal private traders’ market outlet. The study has potential policy implication to improve the pineapple marketing performance and the welfare of the farmers.