Consumer Segmentation Analysis For Fresh Fruits and Vegetables Market in Turkey

ÖZKAN B., AKPINAR M. G., SAYIN C., GÜLCAN S.

Global Business&Technology Association's Fifteenth Annual International Conference, Finland, (Full Text)

  • Publication Type: Conference Paper / Full Text
  • Country: Finland
  • Akdeniz University Affiliated: Yes

Abstract

Fresh fruits and vegetables sector is one of the important sectors for agro-food production and trade worldwide. They play a major role in healthy diets, the prevention from many chronic diseases such as cancer and obesity. For these products, the production and consumption sensitivity is increasing in both Turkey and the EU. In the marketing of fresh fruits and vegetables, the changes and developments about consumers and circumstances surrounding the consumers are effective on the market structure and demand. Many differences are observed in the consumption level and habits of these products. On the other hand similar divisions are concerned in different consumer market segments in the same country. In terms of consumer-oriented marketing concept, the need for the development of the products which meet the expectations of the target audience and provide high consumer satisfaction, affect the production, processing, distribution and promotion activities directly in the domestic and foreign markets.

            Therefore, it was aimed to evaluate the purchasing preferences and attitudes towards fresh fruit and vegetable products for increasing the marketing efficiency. In the study, the primary (original) data, which were derived from face to face interviews on a sample of 300 households, were used as a cross-sectional study from Antalya in Turkey. The consumer data were analyzed by the Cluster Analysis method which is one of the multivariate analysis techniques in SPSS 16.0. In this way, the study was focused on market segmentation and sub-segment profile identification in terms of factors effecting fresh fruit and vegetable purchasing decisions. According to the findings, the demographic and economic disparities are shown to affect the attitudes and behaviors of consumers as to health, quality and price.

Keywords: fresh fruits and vegetables, consumer preferences, consumer segmentation, cluster analysis, Turkey.