INFLUENCE OF DIFFERENT PRODUCT ATTRIBUTES ON ROMANIAN CONSUMER PURCHASE DECISIONS FOR ORGANIC DRIED BERRIES

Summary

Data collected in recent years has shown an enormous
growth in overall consumer health consciousness.
Nowadays the food industry is facing a new profile
of consumers, and these consumers are demanding
healthier options. Packaging claims are considered to
have an influence on consumer purchase decisions for
food products.
In our research we included 289 participants that answered
to our questionnaire that have two parts. The
first part of the questionnaire focuses on attributes
like: price (7 Romanian leu - RON, 12 RON; 1 EUR = 4.59
RON, exchange rate on 30.08.2017), origin (Romania,
European Union), drying method (microwave, sundried,
air-dried), and nutritional claim (with or without
nutritional claim) for a specific organic dried berries
mix, to allow us to supply specific values for these
factors to the research participants. The second part
of the questionnaire focuses on evaluating a series of
statements regarding consumers’ attitudes towards:
organic food, naturalness, healthy food, and novel processing
technologies. Data were processed by conjoint
analysis.
Conjoint analysis of responses from this 289 participants
(representative sample for the Romanian urban
population), with a margin of error of ±6% at a 95%
confidence level) reveals that specific attributes affect
consumer purchase decisions of organic dried berries
mix (P ≤ 0.05). We found that consumers’ willingness to
pay for microwave-dried berries is independent from
values associated with price, origin and nutritional
claim.
This study offers demographic information on Romanian
consumer’s attitude towards new technologies
for organic berry-based products. Also, it is established
that conjoint studies technique is a useful instrument
in designing new products.
Financial support for this project is provided by funding
bodies within the CORE Organic Plus FP7-ERANET-
618107 Ensuring quality and safety of organic
food along the processing chain and with cofounds
from the European Commission UEFISCDI - ERA NET
for Romanian Partner USAMVB - “Innovative and
eco-sustainable processing and packaging for safe and
high quality organic berry products with enhanced
nutritional value” EcoBerries.