This study aimed to characterise consumer profiles, consumption practices, recalled sensory perceptions, preservation strategies, and commercialisation constraints associated with Ntuba ekōn, a traditional Cameroonian food prepared from pounded plantain, across five urban areas. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among 678 participants; after excluding incomplete questionnaires, 673 active responses were analysed using descriptive statistics, association tests, Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA), and Hierarchical Ascending Clustering (HAC). Most respondents (89%) reported consuming Ntuba ekōn. Consumption was primarily motivated by product liking (41%), cultural identity (31%), and perceived satiety (16%), and occurred predominantly at home (84%). Among non-consumers (11%), 41% reported aversion, whereas 32% indicated that they did not know how to prepare the product, with non-consumption strongly concentrated among young urban students in the Littoral region (22.3% non-consumers in Cluster 3). Respondents associated the preferred product with a tender consistency (69.39%), smooth texture (66.43%), yellow or light-yellow colour (85.90%), and slightly sweet taste (76.52%); 81.74% rated its overall sensory image as good or excellent. Preservation was a major constraint, with refrigeration (31%) and regular reheating (28%) being the most frequently reported household practices. Commercialisation was limited (8.41% of respondents sold the product), although 86.54% of vendors reported perceived profitability, structured into three operational typologies dominated by mature informal women custodians (42.1%). Vendors identified preservation (35.29%), manual pounding (17.65%), and input costs (17.65%) as the principal operational constraints. Overall, Ntuba ekōn retains a favourable consumer image and strong cultural relevance, but labour-intensive processing, preservation concerns, and limited commercial scale constrain its wider urban-market development.
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Lawrence et al. (2026) studied this question.