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The purpose of this paper is to reveal influential information used in vegetable purchasing decisions of household primary food shoppers in China and in Taiwan.

Two in-person surveys were administrated separately in Shanghai, China and in Taipei, Taiwan, the two most populous metropolitan areas in China and in Taiwan, respectively.

Results reveal that about 32 per cent of respondents in Taipei purchase vegetables once in every two to three days. The majority of respondents in Shanghai (81 per cent) purchase vegetables on a daily basis. Results of factor analysis reveal the four dimensions, origin labelling, promotion, selection, and quality, influence purchasing decisions of respondents in Taipei and in Shanghai. For household primary food shoppers in Taipei, origin labelling and selection help food shoppers in Taipei in vegetable purchasing decisions, but not promotion. For those food shoppers in Shanghai who purchase large volume of vegetables, quality is the most important factor in purchasing decisions.

This study provides new insights into vegetable purchasing decisions in two populous cities in China and Taiwan. The contributions of this study are to provide valuable information in vegetable purchasing decisions for effective information communication in retailing; and to fill in the gap of research in vegetable purchasing decisions in consumer behaviour studies in Chinese societies.

Grounded in the theory of mental budgeting, this paper aims to investigate how the regret and perfectionism of exposition attendees influences their purchasing strategy.

This research collected on-site data at a well-established specialty food exposition in China. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were applied to test the proposed model.

The findings confirm the effect of psychological mechanism (regret and perfectionism) on exposition attendees’ purchasing strategy as one that boosts/impairs their confidence in purchasing healthy food at the exposition. Specifically, regret and perfectionism show differential contributions to purchasing strategy dimensions. Variety seeking has a positive effect, whereas price consciousness has a negative effect, on purchase confidence.

Event organizers and exhibitors should understand attendees’ consumption-related psychological mechanism and devise effective management and marketing strategies for optimal consumption experiences at expositions. They can create an informative and worry-free experience that facilitates a pleasant thought process to reduce uncertainty in attendees’ on-site decision-making.

The current research pioneered a unique model conceptualizing the important, yet underexplored, phenomenon of purchasing mechanism in the exposition setting. Addressing the emerging interest in food expositions, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first for examining purchasing mechanism from the perspective of mental budgeting, providing insightful knowledge about how the psychological mechanism affects exposition attendees’ pre-purchase evaluation and confidence toward purchasing healthy food at expositions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the moderating effect of religiosity on the relationship between awareness and purchase decision of halal foods.

Using a convenience sampling procedure, 200 questionnaires were distributed to various local higher education institutions with a 64% response rate. A moderated regression analysis is used to test the relationship between awareness and purchase decision, with religiosity as the moderating variable.

As expected, the authors find that among the sample, the level of awareness toward halal foods is high, and that the effect of awareness on purchase decision is positive and significant. Importantly, they find that religiosity acts as a moderating variable on the relationship between awareness and purchase decision.

First, the sample was taken from higher institutions only and respondents were selected using convenience sampling. Hence, it may not be fully representative of the Brunei Muslim population. Second, there may also be omitted variables not considered in the study. Third, the survey instrument and conceptualization of religiosity are both issues that may require further investigation in the literature.

The results indicate that awareness is an important antecedent of Muslim students’ intention to purchase halal foods. Marketers should design their campaigns focusing on creating awareness regarding their compliance with halal products. Moreover, food manufacturers and sellers should use the reliable halal certification and logo as a way to inform their consumers that their products are truly halal.

This study adds to the current limited knowledge of halal foods research. In particular, the authors investigate the moderating effect of religiosity on the relationship between awareness and purchase decision of halal foods.

This purpose of this paper is to understand the environmental impacts of stakeholder-driven sustainable purchasing policies in institutional settings.

The research is framed using stakeholder and life cycle assessment (LCA) theories. The study uses a multi-method approach. Starting with interviews to understand the breadth of sustainability issues and significant food purchases facing institutional purchasing managers, the authors subsequently perform LCA of these various policies using the most popular food item in different categories.

From the interview results, the authors found that food purchasers focus predominately on cost, thus, are committed to food and packaging reduction. They are driven to buy local foods based on their consumer stakeholders but share their commitment to buying local products if the cost is appropriate. In the LCA of popular food items in multiple scenarios, avoiding food waste of various forms had significantly higher carbon emissions savings than packaging reduction or transportation minimizing (buy local) strategies.

The sample relied solely on the perceptions of institutional purchasing managers in university dining services. Future research should involve collecting data from other stakeholder groups such as the customers themselves, institutional leaders, and in other types of institutional settings such as hospitals and government agencies.

The research provides managers with insights concerning the trade-offs between different sustainability objectives. In particular, findings show that reducing waste related animal protein has a bigger impact on environmental performance than many other popular sustainability objectives such as buying local or reducing packaging waste.

The paper focuses on the purchasing trade-offs of buying local vs national food products, different packaging solutions, and food waste generation. These decisions offer some social benefits (improve the economic situation for local farms vs consolidated food producers) as well as multiple environmental benefits.

The paper presents new findings on the sustainability purchasing priorities of stakeholders in institutional food settings and subsequent LCA of those policies to show which might have the most environmental impact.

In recent years, consumers today recognise organic foods as high-quality products which can benefit them in various aspects. The tendency to switch consumption behaviours from conventional to ecological food products or organic food has largely been due to the claims that organic crops are grown in eco-friendly and sustainable environments. Thus, the study highlighted unique results on young consumers' purchasing intentions from a new perspective. The paper aims to investigate the factors influencing consumers' purchase decision towards organic food, particularly amongst Generation Y consumers.

The underlying fuzzy set theory is employed to handle the fuzziness of consumers' perceptions since the attributes are usually expressed in linguistic preferences. Overall, the study focussed on five important aspects – health consciousness, environmental concern, social influencing and ethical concern – that also include twenty criteria that had been identified and introduced after a thorough review of related literature.

The results reveal that the most important criteria in the selected firm are environment protection, chemical instrument, buying attitude and animal testing. In comparison, the cause group includes criteria such as environment protection, natural food and support for training programmes, whilst the effect group includes production practices, monitoring protections and ethically produced food.

The sample collection from the study focussed on Generation Y consumers who consume organic food in Malaysia. This could lead to the limitation towards external generalisability. The study will provide numerous advantages to the communities. The policy maker should develop a proper marketing strategy to promote organic food as food that is healthier, better in nutrition and safer for society.

Utilising fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) in analysing the fuzziness of consumers' perceptions towards consumers' purchase decision can be expected to expand the breadth of knowledge to both academic and practical.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the food and beverage automatic retail environment by analysing the impact of planograms, conceived as a visual merchandising practice and shopping time – the time spent making a purchase – as part of food consumer purchasing behaviour to further enrich the debate on the ability of companies to absorb customer knowledge.

A real-world experiment was conducted using a sample of 27,230 valid observations of consumer purchasing decision-making processes at automatic vending machines (AVMs). Data were collected by a shopper behaviour analytics system that allows for a better understanding of the AVM users' behaviour. Two sets of regressions were run to test the two hypotheses.

The experimental results demonstrated that planograms – the planned, systematic organisation of products in an AVM – positively impact food purchases. A planogram acts as a mediator in the relationship between shopping time and purchase, resulting in shorter shopping times and more purchases.

This work adds to the customer knowledge literature by focussing on customer behaviour in the food and beverage automated shopping environment. The shopper analytics technology adopted to collect real-time data leads to a better understanding of the purchasing behaviour of AVMs' users and provides new marketing and retail insights into AVMs' performance that retailers can use to improve their marketing strategies.

This study aims to use life cycle assessment to determine the environmental impact of food purchases at a small, liberal arts college. The authors also use the results to develop a simple decision-making tool for college and university dining services administrators, attempting to make their food purchases more sustainable.

Life cycle assessment was used to analyze the global warming potential (GWP) of all food products purchased at a college café during a four-month study period.

The authors found the top ten highest impact products accounted for 40% of orders by weight, but 80% of the GWP. In particular, beef and cheese exhibited the highest GWP/kg. These findings highlight the importance of considering the carbon intensity of food products when making purchasing decisions. The authors also examined the carbon intensity and cost of common meal options and developed a carbon intensity comparison heuristic that can assist in making food purchasing decisions with the goal of lowering the GWP of food purchases.

The results of this study show that life cycle assessment is a useful tool for university food service operations seeking to reduce environmental impact. The carbon intensity food comparison heuristic based upon this data serves as a helpful decision-making tool in guiding food service to reduce GWP.

While life cycle assessment has typically been used to analyze individual food products, this study demonstrates its use as a decision-making tool to guide purchasing decisions across an entire array of food purchases.

The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of chocolate packaging and brand on the purchasing decisions of a number of Iranian children and their parents. The paper also aims to investigate the role of pester power as a moderating variable in the relationship between children’s purchasing decision and that of their parents.

Data were collected using a 26-item Likert-scaled questionnaire administered in February 2013 to the parents of 600 children at two daycare centers and four elementary schools in the city of Qazvin in Iran. The returned and complete questionnaires were subjected to confirmatory factor analysis and path analysis within structural equation modeling using IBM® Amos and SPSS statistical packages.

The results show that packaging and brand have a positive effect on parents. However, children were only influenced by packaging, and not brand. Further, it was found that children influenced their parents during store visits. The study also confirms the moderating role of children’s pester power in the relationship between children’s purchasing decision and that of their parents.

A limitation of the study is that the issue of the effect of packaging and brand on children was explored through the opinions of parents. Also, due to budget constraints, images of chocolate products rather than real packages were used. Future research might study the effect of other factors such as peers, socio-cultural issues, and economic status. Another possibility would be to include other variables such as mental involvement and time constraint.

The findings of the study might be useful for all manufacturers and suppliers of goods. More specifically, managers and marketing agents in the chocolate industry are recommended to improve children’s brand awareness through advertising as a way of making them want to buy branded products.

The most important difference between this work and previous studies is its use of children’s pester power as a moderating factor in the relationship between the purchasing decision of children and that of their parents. Another good thing about this paper is that it gives the reader an insight into the Iranian context. The results give the manufacturers a better understanding of the factors children take into account when deciding to purchase something.

Food consumption impacts heavily on the environment. It is therefore highly relevant to study food‐purchasing processes and needs for environmental information in the food supply chain. The objective of this article is to report findings from a study identifying practices in using environmental information when making decisions on what food to procure and purchase.

Using a phenomenographic approach, professional purchasing managers at food production companies and wholesalers in public and commercial food services as well as retailing were interviewed with the aim of identifying practices when using environmental information in decisions on what food to procure for purchasing.

The findings show that purchasers are dependent on corporate policy when it comes to environmental considerations related to food. Purchasers are mainly guided by business parameters with respect to price, quality and service. These factors are given priority over co‐operation along the food supply chain. Such co‐operation has been shown to have the potential to encourage environmentally friendly purchasing decisions.

The study places the issue of the use of and need for environmental information in the food supply chain on the national agenda in Sweden. Thus, the study contributes to increasing the awareness of the importance of professional food purchasers as actors for change towards more environmentally friendly food consumption.

Refusing to purchase suboptimal food plays an important role in food waste. However, it is still unclear what factors in the shopping situation will affect consumers' decision to purchase suboptimal food. The purpose of this paper is to identify the situational factors that affect consumers' suboptimal food purchase and provide a basis for designing effective intervention strategies for follow-up suboptimal food sales.

Based on in-depth interviews with 25 Chinese consumers, this study uses the grounded theory to find out the situational factors that influence consumers' purchase of suboptimal food.

These situational factors are divided into nine categories and 21 subcategories. Compared with general situational factors that affect consumers' food purchase decisions, some unique factors and remarkable roles are found. It is found that the channel of information release, store hygiene, salesmen and point-of-sale presentation are more important in influencing consumers' decisions to buy suboptimal food. Based on the findings, marketing suggestions for food retailers are put forward.

This paper fills in the research gaps on understanding the impacts of situational factors on suboptimal food purchase and particularly reveals the effects of face concept on the purchase. The research findings can provide a theoretical basis for subsequent large-quantitative research, and in view of the similarities between Chinese culture and East Asian culture, these findings are valuable not only for the Chinese food retailers but also for the international retailers wishing to enter the Chinese or East Asian markets.