Household Consumer's Perception towards Frozen Beef

Demand at beet in Indonesia is higher comAbstrs to the domestic beet supply, hence the Indonesian govenment has tries in order to support the high demand of Indonesia people. However, most of Indonesian people prefer to purchase frescat (freshly slaughtered beef) rather than frozen beef. The aims of this study were to identify the characteristics of household consumers who bought beef meat and their perceptions towards frozen beef; including to analyze the relationship between perceptions and consumer characteristics of frozen beef, and to analyze the consumer behavior in making decision to buy frozen beef in Bogor area and DKI Jakarta. Total about 200 households were directly interviewed using structured questionnaire. The questionnaires includes general characteristics of respondents (age, education level, occupation, income, mumber of family member), purchasing behavior which was analyzed descriptively, and respondents perceptions toward frozen beef which was analyzed by calculating the average value of perception and then categorized based on the level of perception category. Results showed that consumer's perceptions toward frozen beef according to several aspects had a low score (average final score 2.37), indicated that consumers had a poor perceptions towards frozen beef. Furthermore, most of the respondents who buy beef were housewives who buy meat in traditional markets which only provide fresh meat, they assumed thaFund h meat had very good quality because the meat came from slaughtered beef. Those respondents think that freezing cause ative effects on beef, freezing treatment reduce the quality such as changes of meat color and flavour; and reduce nutritio 5ontent of beef. It was discovered that socialization about frozen beef and the process of handling frozen meat is required for household consumers to control the quality of beef as well as to increase the consumer's trusts in purchasing frozen beef.