of resources spent on similar projects although attitudes change, and fi-
nancing research from public funds becomes an issue in times of fiscal
prudence.
Fresh produce quality is frequently addressed by individual disciplines
because of the highly specialized nature of a required solution. The ques-
tion that lingers is, How are research results disseminated to other dis-
ciplines and what are the incentives to learn about each other’s
recommendations? Practitioners may face several options to address a
problem, but the disconnected individual solutions lead to inefficiencies,
which are discovered only through trial and error.
Market Valuation of Quality
The neoclassical framework of pricing quality attributes implies that
the final price reflects prices of the bundle of attributes contained in a
unit of a product. Markets are assumed to be perfectly competitive with
unimpeded flow of information instantly available to all market partic-
ipants. Consequently, prices change instantly in reaction to incoming in-
formation. Many agricultural commodity markets were modeled as
perfectly competitive, even though some required adjustments to account
for biological production lags and inventories.
In case of fresh produce, the bundle of attributes is represented by a
single fruit or a vegetable, or a trade prescribed unit. Fresh produce mar-
keting takes place at various market levels, which redefine the basic unit.
For example, a farmer may deliver a truckload of tomatoes to a packer,
which are packaged in boxes for shipment to a wholesaler, but are sold
as individual items at the retail outlet. Under the neoclassical framework,
perfect transmission of market signals is necessary for multilevel mar-
ket analysis because it treats the wholesale and the farm level demand
as the demand derived from consumer demand demonstrated at the re-
tail level.
Quality interpretation and measurement based on the needs of vari-
ous agents throughout the marketing chain prevents the application of a
single theoretical approach to price attributes. The assumption of per-
fect competition implicit in many economic analyses of price-quality re-
lationship represents an approximation of reality. Predicting behavior is
essential for practical applications and, despite its limitations, economic
analysis provides a benchmark for making informed decisions. Statisti-
cal testing verifies the explanatory power of economic models and
relates the incidence of outcomes to preselected probability levels. Prac-