FRAMEWORK FOR THE ANALYSIS OF CONSUMER CHOICE BEHAVIOUR REGARDING CUT FLOWERS AND POT PLANTS

Both in economic and in marketing literature it is sometimes assumed that consumers are implicitly or explicitly engaged in some multistage choice process before the actual purchase takes place.
Stages that may be distinguished are: determination of the budget share that will be spent on each product class, the choice of a product category within a product class and the choice of a specific brand or variety within a product category.
In each of these stages many factors may influence consumer choice behaviour.

This paper discusses in which part of the flower and plant buying households a multistage choice process can be assumed.
Subsequently, a mathematical model will be proposed and discussed for each phase in the choice process.

The data were obtained from a consumer panel and only those households belonging to a panel for a period of two years were selected.
These households were then used to form a sample of 1000 households.
In this way it was possible to base the analysis in each particular phase of the choice process on cross-section data, time-series data and on a pooling of cross-section and time-series data.

The analysis can also b performed on the whole market as well as on particular market segments, which means that potential advantages of market segmentation can be evaluated.

VI Symposium on Horticultural Economics

A. van Tilburg

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1979.97.21