The role of garlic attributes in shaping Indonesian consumers’ purchase intention: results from an online survey

Abstract

Garlic is a commodity that is highly needed by consumers, both for culinary, health and medicinal purposes. Because of the importance of this commodity, Indonesia has become the largest importer of garlic because its production is unable to meet demand. It is important to identify garlic attributes shapes Indonesian consumers purchase intention so that strategies can be developed to improve the quality of local garlic. This study was conducted specifically to determine the level of importance of several garlic attributes from the perspective of consumers. We conducted an online survey in the Greater Jakarta Area and Bandung, involving 493 respondents, to investigate what attributes they consider when buying garlic, in addition to asking several other descriptive questions. Majority of respondents give a high importance to bulb size, clove size, aroma, colour and price. Meanwhile, for the production location and packaging attributes, the majority of respondents gave a low importance. Our survey results surprisingly showed that more than 70% of respondents did not know where the garlic they consumed was produced. The conclusion from this survey show that physical attributes are still important for Indonesian consumers, so the development of local garlic really needs to pay attention to these physical attributes, for example through breeding programs and cultivation practices that can produce garlic characteristics in accordance with consumer wants.