친환경농산물 소비자의 주관적 지식에 따른 세분시장 특성분석

Abstract

The ethical consumption(e.g., organic food, local food, and fair trade), which considers the effects of consumption on the environment and society, has been expanded and the interest on health and well-being has grown to increase the consumer demand and market size drastically. The market size of environment-friendly agricultural products is expected to increase steadily until 2025. Moreover, as people’s income level and living standards have been enhanced, people are more interested in safe food. This study evaluated the consumption realities of environment-friendly consumers and aimed to provide the baseline data for promoting the consumption of environment- friendly agricultural products by analyzing the purchasing characteristics by consumer type. This study identified three factors(i.e., ‘purchase knowledge’, ‘product knowledge’, and ‘use knowledge after purchase’) by conducting factor analysis on twelve variables associated with consumer knowledge. Secondly, the consumer types were classified into ‘environment- friendly quality consideration group(cluster 1)’, ‘environment-friendly careful purchase group(cluster 2)’, and ‘environment-friendly economical purchase group(cluster 3)’ through cluster analysis using the derived ‘purchase knowledge’, ‘product knowledge’, and ‘use knowledge after purchase’ and ANOVA on consumer knowledge. The demographic characteristics of each sub-group were analyzed using cross analysis. The results showed that there were significant differences in characteristics by marital status, age, and annual income. Moreover, the characteristics among the purchase types were significantly different by the number of visits, purchase motivation, purchase route, purchase item, and purchase cost. The objective of this study was to provide useful information for vitalizing environment-friendly agricultural product consumption by analyzing the consumption of environment-friendly agricultural product consumers and predicting the market characteristics and consumption preference of segmented environment-friendly markets with focusing on the subjective knowledge and purchasing characteristics of environment-friendly agricultural product consumers.