We felt the most important question in the survey was what services and products our customers wanted that would help them produce and sell more fresh duck eggs. We gave them twelve choices and they ranked them from most important to least important. More detailed descriptions of these questions was in our prior post. In the following graph, the longer the bar, the higher average ranking it received.
 |
| Services Our Customers Want So They Can Produce and Market More Duck Eggs |
Items in the Other category were requests on how to keep the pens drier, how to manage ducks on pasture, provide sample advertising, conduct a survey of pricing, and explain why duck eggs cause fewer allergic reactions than chicken eggs.
As we develop answers or products to meet these needs, we will provide them in this blog. We are also developing an email list of those interested in the production, marketing and use of fresh duck eggs. We hope to involve these people in our fresh duck egg program. We may ask for their favorite duck egg recipes and quotes from chefs or bakers to whom they sell so we can produce a marketing brochure everyone can use. Or we may ask for comments on a redesigned duck egg carton. Or we may conduct another survey on pricing so those just starting in the business know what others in the nation are charging for duck eggs. If you want to be included in this group, please email us at metzer@metzerfarms.com
The following chart shows where our customers sell their duck eggs. With duck egg brochures, recipes and marketing ideas, I would suspect more will start selling to bakeries, restaurants and grocery stores.
 | |
| Where Our Customers Sell Their Duck Eggs |
We were also interested in the flock sizes of those responding to the survey. As you can see, most of have flocks of from 11 to 100 females.
 |
| Flock Size for Survey Respondents |
Our last question was their prediction of sales for next year. The number on the left is the number of respondents for each category. Over 60% of the respondents predicted sales increases of 10% or more. If you weight the responses according to their flock size, the overall prediction is an increase of 12.3% in sales next year.
 |
| Responders were given five choices for next year's sales forecast |
Many duck eggs are also sold in Asian stores as balut and salted eggs. Less than 5% of our respondents sold balut and salted eggs.
As we said earlier, we feel there is a tremendous potential for fresh duck egg sales. Now that we know what our customers need, we will start working on these services so our customers can meet this market demand.
This is some fascinating research, so thank you for sharing! I strongly believe that there is great potential in duck eggs across the world. Many countries have traditionally used duck eggs in a range of recipes and featured heavily in their diet, and I think more people are getting interested in duck eggs.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately we're not allowed to import any eggs or poultry from overseas (I'm in Australia) which makes things difficult with our small flock base. I would be interested in you book on duck egg production - particularly if there is a focus on free range duck eggs.