Selling Prices of the Frozen Product. This factor has two sides: (1) the relative value of the product - the higher the value, the more that can logically be spent on processing -- and (2) the amount of improvement the buyer is willing to pay for.

Most frozen fruits and vegetables sell for 5 to 10 cents a pound. High - cost freezing methods may be difficult to justify unless there is no alternative to get the desired quality. On the other hand, an improvement in quality might be easy to justify in fish and meat products, many of which are worth a dollar or more a pound, even though the process adds several cents of cost.

The amount of improvement a buyer is willing to pay for involves both real and imagined benefits. For example, the color of frozen turkeys within a fairly wide range has no apparent effect on product quality. Yet because of consumer preference, a bird with a certain color may be sold at a premium price. A somewhat more costly process to produce this color can be easily justified.

Someone defined quality as "that for which a customer will pay more because of its presence." The key to that statement in the economic world concerns the customers willingness to pay. To produce a better quality at a higher cost is futile unless the customer will pay that additional cost. Too often, however, buyers are not willing to pay for as good quality as processors are able to deliver. This may not even involve instant freezing. It may just be "case-freezing" to save a few cents a case instead of freezing in individual cartons or in bulk. In a market where price is an excessively dominant factor, little encouragement exists to improve the product. -About all the processor can reasonably do is to produce the best product the buyer is willing to pay for.