Author: Mario Ortez, PhD Candidate, Purdue University Department of Agricultural Economics. Learn more about Mario from his past writings on Consumer Corner: Thoughts on Value, Cost and Price, In Favor of Differentiation and Divergent Market Movements on Varying Beef Cuts.

When you hear about aged beef, you probably think of high-end restaurants accompanied by high-end bills. You also probably think of “dry-aged beef”. As it turns out, the ancient practice of beef aging has two different methods, dry-aging, and the less talked about wet-aging. Both aging methods have been shown to improve the beef eating experience, and most of the beef you purchase at the store is “unintentionally wet-aged”! With the advent of online meat retailing, you now can purchase aged beef, both dry-aged and wet-aged, with just one click in addition to getting this product at special stores or high-end steak houses. But how much do U.S. consumers really know about beef aging? And, aside from beef connoisseurs, are they willing to pay a premium for it?

While we know almost beyond doubt that consumers care most about price and palatability (tenderness, juiciness and flavor) when purchasing beef, we don’t have a strong sense of whether an average consumer cares about the method by which improved palatability can be achieved and at what cost. (For a recent study of consumers’ preferences for beef attributes, please see our recent Meat Science article, “What do U.S. consumers care about regarding beef and its supply chain?” or check out K-State’s “Monthly Meat Demand Monitor”.)

To aid in this understanding, we recently published an article in QOpen, a newly launched Journal of Agricultural, Climate, Environmental, Food, Resource and Rural Development Economics, titled “Valuation of Dry and Wet Aged Beef by U.S. Consumers”. This article is a collaboration between me, Dr. Nicole Widmar and Dr. Nathan Thompson, all researchers with the Department of Agricultural Economics at Purdue, and Dr. Yuan Brad Kim, a premier meat aging expert with the Purdue Department of Animal Sciences. Our research investigated U.S. consumers’ knowledge and attitudes towards both beef aging methods and, through a choice experiment, we elicited willingness to pay premiums for this.

Our research found U.S. consumers are not generally familiar about either wet-aged nor dry-aged beef. Over 60% of respondents in our study indicated to be “less than moderately familiar” with dry-aged beef and over 70% with wet-aged beef, making dry-aged the slightly more familiar method. Perhaps influenced by the lack of information about beef aging, U.S. consumers generally ranked all other attributes studied as superior to wet-aged and dry-aged beef (Fig. 3):

Our econometric analysis reveals consumers’ willingness-to-pay for aged beef is widely influenced by general beef preference. What this means is that people who already like beef generally had higher willingness-to-pay for both wet-aged and dry-aged beef, which is good news given that the former is a probabilistically larger group. It is not all good news for beef aging though; although people who liked beef seem to be more receptive to beef aging, they still showed an average $0/lb. willingness to pay for dry-aged beef and a modest $0.07 $/lb. for wet-aged beef in 1/2 experimental setting. The fact that more familiar dry-aged-beef elicited a lower premium that wet-aged beef is perhaps surprising to hear; however, we need to keep in mind that those are average premiums from all respondents.

Perhaps information campaigns that help consumers become more informed about the wonders of beef aging are necessary before the palatability benefits of this practice can be fully materialized for average beef consumers in this country.

For more information, please see:

Mario Ortez, Nicole Olynk Widmar, Nathan M Thompson, Yuan H Brad Kim, Valuation of Dry and Wet Aged Beef by U.S. Consumers, Q Open, 2022;, qoac011, https://doi.org/10.1093/qopen/qoac011

ConsumerCorner.2022.Letter.15