Analysis Of Consumers' Willingness To Pay For Segmented Chocolate Drinks In Abia State, Nigeria

ABSTRACT

Cocoa belong to the family of steruliacacea and gerus "theobroma" was discovered in the 811 century at the Amazon basin and later spread to other tropical areas of south and central America and West Africa (Osun, 2001) The crop was eventually introduced into Nigeria in 887 (Ayorinde 1995). Nigeria was rated the second higher producer of cocoa in the world ranking after Ivory Coast, Brazil and Ghana. Prior to the oil boom of the mid 1970s, cocoa was one of the highest foreign exchange earner in Nigeria and for a long time the crop has been generating substantial foreign exchange earnings for the country (Titola, 1997). The cocoa sector still offer a large sizable number of people employment both directly .id indirectly (Oduwole, 2004) in addition it is an important sources of raw material as well as sources of revenue to government of cocoa producing states. However, evidence has shown that the growth rate of cocoa production has been declining in recent years as a result of old age of cocoa tress and inefficiency in the use of resources by farmers. The implication of this, has been reduced cocoa production at a time when there are more processing industries and the increased demand for Nigerian cocoa as result of increase growth.ii consumption of chocolate drinks in the world over.