Consumers’ Perception and acceptability of Nigerian rice in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria

The study examined consumers’ perception and acceptability of local rice brands produced, processed and packaged in Akwa Ibom State. The target population for the study comprised all the local rice consumers in the various households of the study area. A multi-stage sampling procedure was used in selecting 340 respondents for the study. Data were collected with the use of structured questionnaire and analysed using, means, standard deviation and rankings. Findings showed that consumers’ perception of local rice in the study area was highly positive. The respondents perceived that local rice is tasty ( x̄ =3.63), both the rich and the poor have access to local rice ( x̄ =3.63), the rice has high nutritive contents ( x̄ =3.56) and is cheaper when compared to foreign rice ( x̄ =3.54). Also, respondents demonstrated good level of acceptability of local rice with an index value of 0.4029. Since the perception of the respondents promotes acceptability of the locally produced rice, more should be done to promote the positive perception while increasing acceptability level of the respondents through improvement of the quality of local rice produced by the state, product availability, advertisement, brand promotions and of course improved packaging of the rice products. Keywords: Perception of Nigeria rice, acceptability of local rice in Akwa Ibom State