The beef industry’s 2016-2020 Long Range Plan (LRP) was adopted in the summer of 2015. The plan, whose vision is “to responsibly produce the most trusted and preferred protein in the world,” set forth to address four focused core strategies. Key to achieving these strategic goals is the ability to accurately measure progress and outcomes. One of the core strategies, Grow Consumer Trust in Beef and Beef Production, called for the development of a custom metric to make sure progress could be effectively tracked and evaluated. This trust measure, an algorithm based on six focused questions, was benchmarked in last fall’s Consumer Image Index. Following is an overview of how that measure was developed and how it will be applied to track consumer perceptions of trust in the beef industry over the next several years.
Background
The 2016-2020 beef industry long range plan focuses on four core strategies.
More specifically, the trust strategy calls for more focus on antibiotic stewardship, the implementation of a certification/verification program and continued investment in beef safety initiatives. Moreover, the industry must engage the entire beef community in building consumer trust and collaborate with a broader group of industry partners and outside organizations to protect beef’s image.
While the other core strategies had readily available measures to track progress, the trust strategy did not. As the task force of industry leaders responsible for developing the plan considered this challenge, they requested that a measure be developed that would provide this perspective. In response, the checkoff looked at a variety of potential metrics and ultimately determined that, given how much ground this strategy covers, focusing on just one area of trust would not suffice. The task started with an in-depth review of the variables tracked in the checkoff-funded Consumer Image Index, a market research study conducted annually with 1,000 consumers since 2012, capturing feedback on a wide variety of importance and performance criteria about beef and beef production.
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