SOCIO-ECONOMIC CHARACTERISTICS OF WATERMELON MARKETERS IN IBADAN METROPOLIS, OYO STATE, NIGERIA

The research examined the socio-economic characteristics of watermelon marketers in Ibadan Metropolis of Oyo State. Primary data collected through structured questionnaires were used for the study and a total of 100 watermelon marketers were sampled from four majormarkets of the metropolis. Both description and inferential statistics were also used to analyze the data and the results obtained showed that 88.6% of the marketers are less than 40 years old, 63.3% are males, 70.9% are married and 54.4% has no formal education at all. Also, 84.8% of the marketers are Hausa and 62.0% had marketing experience of between 1 and 5 years. Regression analysis revealed that tribe of the marketers, amount of initial capital and type of seller significantly influence the gross margin of watermelon marketing and R2 of 0.840 indicates that 84 % of the variation in gross margin was explained by the socio-economic characteristics.