The Impact of Consumer Personality on Purchasing Behavior in the Dairy Market in Terms of Psychological Factors

Abstract

Since the 1990s of the 20thcentury, the Slovak dairy industry has undergone many significant changes which have been related to the reduction of the herds of cattle and milk cows, the decrease of quantity of milked milk, low purchase prices of milk, the decline of a great number of milk producers and processors. The consumption of cow´s milk and dairy products in Slovakia is very low in comparison with the countries of the European Union (about 320 kg), Europe (293 kg), the Czech Republic (280 kg), and the rest of the world. It varies around 170 kg per capita per year, which is also considerably lower consumption than the dose of 220 – 240 kg per capita per year recommended by doctors. Since 1990 the production and consumption of dairy products and cheeses have decreased significantly. In Slovakia, the consumption is twice even three times less than in the developed countries of Europe. The reason for this situation is the behavior of a consumer and the factors having an impact on the consumption of cow`s milk and dairy products. The objective of the paper is to indicate the impact of the personal consumers` characteristics on the purchasing decisions on the market of the products of cow`s milk origin, based on the processed answers of the respondents participating in the questionnaire survey. The primary data were obtained via the questionnaire survey, which was conducted with 786 respondents. The questionnaire consisted of four parts – Eysenck`s personality test, the questions targeted at the detection of factors influencing the consumers` purchasing behavior and decision making, the questions related to expressing opinions about cow`s milk and dairy products, and the classification questions providing the information about the respondents. The data were processed by the methods of quantitative and qualitative statistics – Chi-square statistic χ2test of square contingency, Chi-square χ2goodness of fit test, two proportion test, Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, the test of hypotheses of relative proportion.