Do taste expectations mediate the impact of quality cues on consumers’ choice of chicken?

Summary

The hypothesis of this research is that the impact of quality dimensions on consumers’ willingness to buy organic vs. conventional or free-range chicken is partly mediated through taste expectations. The study comprises two exploratory focus group studies, followed by a questionnaire containing a conjoint analysis design. The purpose of the focus groups was to determine the most important quality cues, which could afterwards be incorporated into the choice experiment. It was found that production method, price, size and information about farmer and rearing conditions are very important quality cues for the choice of chicken, and that taste is one of the most important quality dimensions in consumers’ overall evaluation of chicken. In the next step, the four quality cues were included in a conjoint design, where nine different profiles of whole fresh chickens were created using a fractional factorial design. The conjoint design was a metric traditional conjoint approach based on an additive model, where 405 respondents had to rate their willingness to buy and expectations regarding taste of each one of the nine different chickens on scales from 0 to 10. It was thus possible to conduct two different conjoint analyses, in order to determine the impact of the quality cues on buying intention on the one hand, and on the expected taste on the other hand. In these models, quality cues are initial variables, while expected taste and willingness to buy are both outcome variables. The two models are then integrated when testing whether or not expected taste mediates the effects of quality cues on willingness to buy. Hence, in the mediational model, quality cues are initial variables, willingness to buy is the outcome and expected taste is the mediator. The most effective way to do the mediation analysis is still to be determined.