What Matters When Purchasing Fresh Agri-Food for Taiwanese Consumers? A Best-Worst Scaling Approach

Abstract

Consumers’ food purchase decision is multifaceted and complex, which is not only influenced by product and process characteristics, but also by the present decision-making circumstances. This study investigates this complexity of consumers’ food choice influenced by product and process characteristics, as well as by the decision-making circumstances (i.e. tactile sensory aspects of the product and shopping location), using best-worst scaling (BWS) methodology. BWS allows measuring the importance of different food buying criteria, thereby eliciting consumers’ preferences. A total of 795 food consumers participated in a street-intercept interview performed in three cities of Taiwan. Results indicate that among the nine food purchase criteria (e.g. country-of-origin (CoO) labelling, production methods, chemical residue testing (CRT) information, price, shopping location, visual appearance, sense of touch, package size, and a recommendation given by a significant one), CRT information is the most important criteria in consumers’ purchase decision, followed by CoO, production methods and hedonic characteristics. Three segments of consumers can be distinguished: the health-conscious purchasers (50.20%), the hedonic buyers (31.90%), and the origin-driven shoppers (17.90%).