Pakistan is one of the world's leading mango producing and exporting countries. However, Pakistan's mango industry is beset with a number of chain-wide challenges that not only lower the value of mangoes to consumers and reduce the profitability of value chain actors, but also hinder the industry's potential contribution to the country's socio-economic development. As a result, there is now a growing realisation that the mango industry must be developed on a sustainable basis. This coincides with an accelerating drive towards sustainable development of agri-food industries around the world, in order to provide growing populations with adequate supplies of safe and affordable food.Thus, this study aimed to find out how the performance of value chains could be improved in order to bring sustainable development to Pakistan's mango industry. It focused on four issues: 1) consumers' mango value preferences and the implications of these preferences for the industry's development; 2) the structure and performance of the mango industry; 3) constraints on sustainable development of the industry; and 4) measures needed to address consumer, economic, social and environmental issues in the value chains so as to promote industry's sustainable development.A conceptual framework that integrated value chain and triple bottom line (TBL) sustainable development approaches was developed arguing that sustainable development could not be achieved without improving economic, social and environmental performance across entire value chains. A case study methodology was adopted and the case study participants included consumers, value chain actors and public stakeholders in the Pakistani provinces of Punjab and Sindh.To understand mango value preferences, five focus group discussions involving 40 consumers and a survey of 450 consumers was conducted. Thematic content analysis was performed on focus group data whereas descriptive statistics and clusters analysis were employed to analyse survey data. In order to understand the industry's structure, performance and constraints, 150 in-depth interviews were held with value chain actors such as retailers, wholesalers, commission agents, exporters, preharvest contractors, growers and input suppliers and representatives of public stakeholders. Data from the interviews were analysed using thematic content analysis.Consumer data showed the importance of both intrinsic (search and experience) and extrinsic (safety and marketing) quality attributes in mango buying. In-depth analysis of these attributes revealed three consumer segments -mango lovers, value seekers and safety conscious. Mango lovers concentrated primarily on search and experience attributes and safety conscious attached more importance to safety related attributes. Value seekers however considered all attributes important. In general consumers expressed their dissatisfaction with the mango value delivered to them because of use of Calcium III carbide for mango ripening, retailer malpractices and ineffective government regula...
