Abstract

This paper presents the marketing performance and efficiency of evaporative-preservation cooling system for fresh tomato as an update of the performance evaluation of the evaporative cooling system developed at the Federal University of Technology Akure, Nigeria. A total of one hundred and five (105) fresh tomato marketers were sampled. Marketing margin analysis was performed to determine the performance of the preserved tomato vegetable during dry season based on their mode of preservation. Shepherd’s efficiency formula result analysis shows that fresh tomato market was efficient with average marketing efficiency of 17.65%. The two-independent samples t-test results (t-value = 74.014) further reveal that profit margin for users of evaporative cooling system is significantly different from users of traditional mode of preservation, at 5% level of significance. However, disaggregated wholesaler’s profit margin of N6,261.6 per month for users of traditional preservation method implies that they are not efficient compared with users of evaporative cooling system averaging N12,381.4 per month. Given the wide tropical variability in temperatures and relative humidity, evaporative cooling system is of economic importance towards commodity marketing development in Ondo State, Nigeria.

Key words: Evaporative cooling system, tomato, marketing performance, marketing efficiency, marketing margin, wholesale market, Ondo State, Nigeria.