The Analyses of consumers' Purchase Intention towards Japanese Rice - a case study on consumers from Beijing & Tianjin, China -

概要

[Objective]
The domestic market of Japanese rice has begun to shrink. Exploit the overseas market of Japanese rice could be a pressing task. Japanese rice is high-quality, high-end price product in most of Japan's rice importing countries. But Japan's rice didn't go smoothly in the Chinese rice market. In 2018, the ban on Niigata rice was officially lifted. And in the same year, the export volume of Japanese rice to China increased significantly, also in 2019 the export volume keeps rising. Imported food like Japanese rice in the Chinese market owns potential. Under this kind of circumstance, the aim of this study is to figure out which factors will affect Chinese consumers’ purchase intention and give some following implications to improve the consumption of Japanese Niigata rice in the Chinese market.

[Method]
In this research, the theory of planned behavior is the theoretical model to analyze Chinese consumers' purchase intention through hierarchical logistic regression. Based on the original model which consists of attitude, subject norms, and perceived behavioral control, two new factors were added, which are trust factors like trust degree towards the Japanese government, rice retailers and the farmers, and the demographic characteristics. 400 surveys were collected through online questionnaires in China. Hierarchical logistic regression is used as the statistical method to analyze the data

[Results]
The findings of this research showed that Chinese consumers’ intentions to purchase Japanese Niigata rice were best explained by the perception of their attitude among the core TPB variables. Subjective norm was also a significant predictor of Chinese intentions to purchase Japanese Niigata rice. Moreover, perceived behavioral control also could determine consumers’ intentions. Furthermore, the extended model of TPB shows that consumer trust is another major factor in determining the intention to buy Japanese Niigata rice. Demographic characteristics also were found to be significant in predicting purchase intention. The purchase intention was significantly influenced by customers’ gender, age, and marriage situation. Men, elder people, and married people are more likely to buy Japanese Niigata rice. The findings are slightly different from those of previous studies.

[Conclusion]
The findings confirmed that the proposed extended TPB is a useful model to clarify which trust factors and demographic characteristics guide consumers to purchase Japanese Niigata rice. The power of trust was also tested in predicting intentions to purchase organic products. This can lead to practicable suggestions for stakeholders in Japan and China: the importance of the Japanese government, rice retailers, and farmers in building consumer trust could be used to implement innovative and more efficient marketing strategies for Japanese Niigata rice.