Estudio comparativo de precios de productos básicos alimenticios en sitios de abastos de la ciudad de Machala, periodo 2021

Abstract

In current times, the availability of food is becoming more and more relevant for the well-being and quality of life of people, where agri-food production is becoming more and more extensive in order to supply the food demand in the market. The food that comes to be offered in the different supply sites are consumed by a demanding demand based on damages and nutritional aspects with seasonal diets in relation to the tastes and preferences of consumers. The tendency to know the prices of food considered basic in Ecuador and in the city of Machala is increasingly contrasted by consumers who want and seek to make the most of their savings for food consumption, therefore the consumer tries to make their purchases or expenditures in supply sites where prices are low and the purchase and sale service is the most optimal considering variables such as location, family members and the food needed to meet a nutritional basket and quality in terms of food. The various supply sites, final consumers, wholesalers and intermediaries seek to set and find prices in line with the income in the case of the final consumer and with the competition in the case of companies or supply sites engaged in the agri-food industry. Therefore, the present work was based on a comparative study of prices of basic food products in supply sites in the city of Machala, through a statistical analysis of data based on a hypothesis test to determine if there are significant differences in the prices of each study site and to determine which supply site offers products at lower and higher prices. The comparison was carried out based on 30 foods considered basic according to INEC data, for each of the most popular food supply sites in the city of Machala, which were the "25 de junio" Market, "Mi Comisariato", the Wholesale Market and the hypermarket "Sivi Market". That is to say, there were 120 observations, 30 for each supply site. To obtain the results, the comparative analysis was carried out in the IBM SPSS statistical program, where it was tested whether the data met the assumptions of the ANOVA statistical test, to later compare the means of monthly consumption of basic foodstuffs according to the supply site. One of the assumptions tested was the contrast of the normality of data, which was carried out through the Shapiro-Wilk test, whose result led to rejecting the null hypothesis and accepting the alternative hypothesis, that is, that the data of the average monthly consumption does not have or does not follow a normal distribution. Therefore, one of the assumptions of the ANOVA test was not met. Once it was verified that the data did not comply with the assumptions of the ANOVA statistical test, we proceeded to discard its execution, so we chose to perform the "Kruskal-Wallis" test as a non-parametric test for free distributions. The result of this test guaranteed the acceptance of the null hypothesis and the rejection of the alternative hypothesis, therefore, it is concluded that the average prices of monthly consumption of basic foods between the supply sites of study in the city of Machala are equal and there is no significant statistical difference. In conclusion, through the analysis of the data in the box plot and bias, it was possible to guarantee that the highest prices are found in supply site II (Mi Comisariato) and the lowest prices in supply site III (Wholesale Market). With the results obtained, it is considered prudent to take into account the number of members per family and a larger food basket in order to obtain statistical significance in terms of monthly consumption and the price of the food they wish to compare according to the supply sites.