Factors Affecting Consumers’ Brand Preference of Dairy Products in Addis Ababa Outlet Shops
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Date
2015-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Dairy industry and product brand marketing are growing with increasing demand for livestock based foods in urban areas of Ethiopia. More and more dairy brands are entering the market both from local and imported sources. Consumers are faced with challenges of making logical decision among the different brands. Sellers and producers should know the factors affecting consumers’ brand preference for their products. So far little is documented about dairy brand preferences of consumers in the Ethiopian context. The objective of this study was to explore consumers’ purchasing pattern for different dairy products (fluid milk, powdered milk, butter, cheese, yoghurt), and to assess the influence of the demographic, social, and marketing variables on purchase pattern and brand switch decisions of dairy product consumers in Addis Ababa outlet shops. A combination of exploratory, descriptive and inferential statistical methods was used to conduct the study. Primary data was collected using structured interview questionnaire administered by the researcher to 304 customers of the outlet shops (of varying scales) selling dairy products. Outlet shops were sampled based on stratified random sampling and customers were sampled using mall-intercept method. Both descriptive and empirical analyses (multinomial logit and probit model) were made to validate the findings from the interviews. Findings indicate that consumers’ purchase of dairy products increased significantly for fluid milk and moderately for other products (butter, cheese and yogurt) while the purchase pattern remained constant for powdered milk. Marital status, gender, income and occupation are found to be the demographic variables affecting consumers brand preferences significantly. Product/brand and mall features affecting consumers brand preference significantly are: availability, accessibility, prices and quality. Recommendations for business sector and policy makers were made and future research area suggested considering contextual issues for Ethiopian dairy brand consumers
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Keywords
Dairy products, Purchase pattern, Brand preference