At a return of $9.63 for every $1 invested, butter promotion bested all other investments, according to an annual Texas A&M University study that evaluates returns from the dairy producer-funded Dairy Checkoff. Dairy exports and cheese also represented good bets with a return of $5.12 and $4.26, respectively, for every $1 of investment.
Fluid milk, which continues to hemorrhage market share to other beverages, still netted a $2.14 return for every $1 of investment. For the sake of discussion, what does that $2.14 number really mean? Without promotion, fluid milk's sales numbers would be even worse.
This year's Texas A&M annual review, which is mandated by federal law and reported to Congress on an annual basis, also evaluated DMI's partnership with Domino's Pizza. The Texas A&M economists estimated that there was a return of $4.31 for every $1 of dairy producer checkoff dollars mainly due to additional cheese sold on a typical serving of pizza.
What did the Dairy Checkoff contribute to the bottom line?
Dairy promotion lifted milk prices by 55 cents per hundredweight from 1995 to 2011, reported the research team.
They also estimated that beverage milk consumption was 5.1 percent higher than it would have been without dairy promotion efforts; cheese grew 2.6 percent during the same time and butter 1.5 percent.
