The Behavior of Marketing Margins on Citrus Fruits

Abstract

T o TALK about and do some research on margins is now quite fashionable among those working in the areas of marketing and prices. The recent upsurge of interest in margins was stimulated by appropriations made with the expectation that marketing research would uncover solutions to problems facing marketers, and that as a result margins could be narrowed with much of the gain accruing to farmers. Although few, if any, such solutions have yet been developed, we are accumulating an inventory of information on margins for many products. My objectives are, first, to indicate the nature of some of the margin information becoming available for citrus products, and then to make some general points about research on margins. Due to time limitations my remarks will be limited to fresh citrus, particularly oranges. Fresh Oranges Serve As Example

Estimating Marketing Margin Cost Components: An Application of Simulation to Products of the Vegetable Oil Industry

“…Despite this fact, there are many technical and statistical problems associated with both the performance of marketing analyses and utilization of margin reports [2,7,9,12]. Most early marketing margin studies either ignored or circumvented these problems, concentrating on estimating absolute magnitudes of marketing margins over time [1,3,5,10]. Marketing margin studies performed in the last few years have continued, in varying degrees, to ignore these and other problems implicit in the analysis.…”