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Growing Chinese medicinal herbs in the United States: understanding practitioner preferences

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Abstract

The use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) by US consumers has grown in recent years. CAM therapies often utilize medicinal herbs as part of the treatment process; however, research on US practitioner preferences for medicinal herbs is limited, despite growing concern surrounding the sustainability of wild-harvested medicinal herbs. In order better to understand consumer preferences for this emerging market, a mail survey of US practitioners (licensed acupuncturists) was conducted to examine the importance of five herb attributes in practitioners’ herb selection decisions: (1) country of origin, (2) freshness, (3) production method (organic versus conventional), (4) price, and (5) traceability. The significance of these five traits is investigated using discrete choice analysis, and the implications for US medicinal herb growers are discussed.

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Notes

  1. For example, in 2000 the Medicinal Herb Consortium was created. This consortium consisted of grower associations across five states: CA, MN, NY, NM, and WV (Giblette and Martin 2007).

  2. Retailers in the food industry are often referred to as “channel captains” as they are instrumental in making market decisions regarding key product attributes (e.g., quality) for the entire food chain (Kohls and Uhl 2002). Due to the complex nature of medical herb formulations and the practitioner-patient relationship, Chinese medicinal herb practitioners play the same important role in the Chinese medicinal herb market.

  3. Often herbal prescriptions are formulated from a large number of individual herbs. For this reason, practitioners, rather than patients, make the majority of decisions regarding the specific attributes of herbs to be prescribed, and for the purposes of this study we consider practitioners the primary source of demand.

  4. The American Association of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine uses the term “Oriental” rather than “Chinese” medicine.

  5. Master’s programs accredited by the ACAOM are recognized by the US Department of Education. At the time of writing, however, the doctoral programs accredited by the ACAOM are not yet recognized by the US Department of Education (ACAOM 2010).

  6. Giblette and Martin (2007) conducted a feasibility study, but product pricing was not considered.

  7. Contact information for survey respondents was purchased from the mailing list of a trade journal for licensed acupuncturists. Approximately 3–5 contacts were blind tests for the purchasing company, resulting in a net sample of 1,995 surveys.

  8. The low response rate may be due, in part, to the particular sampling frame used in the study. As indicated earlier, a majority of acupuncturists sell products (often herb products) to their patients. While acupuncturists may sell herbs to their patients, the amount of sales may vary and may be considered by some practitioners as a small part of their core business; thus some survey recipients may have chosen not to respond to the survey.

  9. Survey participants were presented with an unspecified “basket of Chinese medicinal herbs” that were identical in makeup except for the attributes described in each choice description. Another approach that could have been utilized would have specified a particular herb. The first approach was selected in preference to the second due to the large number of herbs used within the industry. If a particular herb been specified in the choices presented to the participants, some participants may have hesitated to answer the question (e.g., if they did not use the specified herb on a frequent basis).

  10. Unique choices in each choice set would result in 96 unique choices. The difference between maximum unique choices and actual unique choices were a result of duplicate choices across different choice sets (i.e., survey versions).

  11. Readers interested in a more in-depth discussion or derivation of the model and accompanying methodology are referred to Louviere et al. (2000) and Train (2003).

  12. Related to both individual-specific and alternative-specific attributes.

  13. Specification requires the assumption that errors (ε) are distributed independent and identically (iid) according to the extreme value type I distribution (sometimes referred to as the Weibull, Gumbel, and double-exponential distribution (Louviere et al. 2000).

  14. Sample sizes for descriptive statistics vary as some survey respondents declined to answer certain demographic questions.

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Acknowledgments

This research was made possible through the support of New Mexico State University’s Agricultural Experiment Station. The authors thank Jean Giblette as well as two reviewers for helpful comments on previous drafts of this manuscript. The authors assume responsibility for all remaining errors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Agricultural Economics and Agricultural Business, New Mexico State University, MSC 3169 NMSU, P. O. Box 30003, Las Cruces, NM, 88003-8003, USA

    Jay M. Lillywhite, Jennifer E. Simonsen & Vera Wilson

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  1. Jay M. Lillywhite
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  2. Jennifer E. Simonsen
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Correspondence to Jay M. Lillywhite.

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Lillywhite, J.M., Simonsen, J.E. & Wilson, V. Growing Chinese medicinal herbs in the United States: understanding practitioner preferences. Agric Hum Values 29, 151–159 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-011-9332-z

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