Does the consumers’ buying behavior differ for vegetarian and non-vegetarian food products? Evidences from an emerging market

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to identify and compare the factors which affect the consumers’ buying behavior of vegetarian and non-vegetarian food products in an emerging middle-size market. The paper also compares the preferences of the consumers for various food products and their respective market attributes.

Design/methodology/approach

A total of 282 households of two middle-sized cities of India were personally surveyed with a structured questionnaire. Simple statistical analysis such as frequency distribution, factor analysis and analysis of variance, and logit regression were carried out to infer the required information.

Findings

The results indicate that consumers consume more of vegetarian product than that of non-vegetarian products. Most of the consumers were interested in seeing and verifying the products of both of the categories before buying. Age and income of the consumers play important role in influencing their buying behavior for vegetarian food products, but not that of non-vegetarian food products. It was found that credence attributes of products, and market attributes play a dominant role in influencing the consumers’ behavior for both vegetarian and non-vegetarian food products. Packaged branded products were not popular in both the food categories.

Research limitations/implications

The localized nature of this study limits the scope of wider generalization. Future research could use larger samples spread across all regions having different food culture.

Practical implications

The findings of the study will be of help to food retailers who are interested to know whether the consumers’ buying process for these two categories of food products is more or less same or different in nature. This would help them to customize their product-specific marketing strategies as per the customers’ preferences and requirements.

Originality/value

The paper gives a comparative insight on consumers’ behavior toward both vegetarian and non-vegetarian food. It provides specific reasons for having different or similar marketing strategies for two categories of food.

Citation

Kumar, N. and Kapoor, S. (2015), "Does the consumers’ buying behavior differ for vegetarian and non-vegetarian food products? Evidences from an emerging market", British Food Journal, Vol. 117 No. 8, pp. 1998-2016. https://doi.org/10.1108/BFJ-09-2014-0324