Quantitative indicators of fruit and vegetable consumption

Dagmar Kozelová,Zuzana Čmiková,Dana Országhová,Milan Fiľa

doi:10.5219/570

Abstract

The quantitative research of the market is often based on surveys and questionnaires which are finding out the behavior of customers in observed areas. Before purchasing process consumers consider where they will buy fruit and vegetables, what kind to choose and in what quantity of goods. Consumers' behavior is affected by the factors as: regional gastronomic traditions, price, product appearance, aroma, place of buying, own experience and knowledge, taste preferences as well as specific health issues of consumers and others. The consumption of fruit and vegetables brings into the human body biological active substances that favorably affect the health of consumers. In the presented research study we were interested in differences of consumers' behavior in the consumption of fruit and vegetables according to the place of residence and gender. In the survey 200 respondents has participated; their place of residence was city or village. The existence of dependences and statistical significance were examined by selected statistical testing methods. Firstly we analyzed the responses via statistical F-test whether observed random samples have the same variance. Then we applied two-sample unpaired t-test with equal variance and χ2-test of statistical independence. The statistical significance was tested by corresponding p values. Correlations were proved by the Cramer's V coefficient. We found that place of residence has no impact on the respondents' consumption of fruit. The gender of respondents does not affect their consumption of fruit. Equally, the gender does not affect the respondents' consumption of vegetables. Only in one observed case the significant differences proved that the place of respondent residence has impact on the consumption of vegetables. Higher consumption of vegetables is due to the fact that the majority of citizens, who live in villages, have a possibility to grow their own vegetables and, thus, the demand for it in village shops is low.

Highlights

In the food market the customers’ behavior is affected by different factors
We assumed that citizens who live in villages consume more portions of fruit and vegetables than those who live in towns
We assumed that gender of the respondents has impact on the consumption of vegetables

Summary

Introduction

In the food market the customers’ behavior is affected by different factors. The most important factors, which have an impact on the customers’ behavior, are the quality of the products and price of products. The differences in consumers’ behavior in the food market were analyzed by Rousseau and Vranken (2013), Kutnohorská and Tomšík (2013); new trends in eating and impacts on purchasing habits of consumers were examined by Horská et al, (2012), economic and management aspects of the production, sales and demand for food by Bielik et al, (2014), Kozáková et al, (2014), Tóthová and Prčík (2011). Interesting results were obtained by Chuanmin et al, (2014) scenario experimental methodology of carbon labeling on agri-food products, coupled with 873 questionnaires collected from six cities in China; they made a statistical analysis of different types of consumers’ behavior on the low-carbon agri-food purchase

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