| Food market is a market with high asymmetric information.Due to the disadvantage on food safety questions,consumers are prone to make decisions depending on their preference of brand, price and green certification. And the enterprises which produce safe quality food are often seek for difference on food product attributes to cater for the consumers'preferences. They take them as food safety signals.However, food safety issues are of high frequency in recent years.Some famous brands and"exempt products"have put themselves in a series of food safety scandals.These accidents have disturbed the consumers'decision systemes and have changed their preference on various security signales. This not only results in the disordered situation of companies in product design, market segment, propaganda strategies and the absence of government regulation resources, but also reduces the efficiency of the whole community level. In this sense,the research on how to show consumers preferences of various signals has important theoretical and practical value.At present, there's various understanding about the importance of these signals, and it lacks of empirical support about consumer preferences of signal. Based on economics theory, with conjoint analysis, this paper takes the edible oil product as an example to seek to show consumers preference of brand, price and green certification in the edible oil consumption, and to provide recommendations for enterprises and government regulation.This article is divided into four parts. The first part of the paper relates research background and significance, reviews the research at home and abroad on the reasons and countermeasures to food security issues as well as consumer preferences of different signals,discourses the basic logic and framework. Next, the conjoint analysis method,which is the main research method of this article, and the experimental design as well as questionnaires are introduced. In the part three, by means of survey data, with conjoint analysis, this paper analyses consumers'preference for these attributes in the edible oil consumption, and approaches particular preferences of consumers with different demographic characteristics. Besides, the author also makes cluster analysis and forecasts the market share of the virtual products.The last part of the paper is conclusions, some advises are given for related corporates and government deparments based on the results of preceding empirical analysis. Prospects for future research are discussed in the end.The main conclusions of this paper are as follows: the most preferred attributes of consumers are green certification, followed by the brand attributes, and then the price;the higher the level of green certification and the brand awareness, the more the product is valued, and the product with moderate price draw the most attention; the edible oil products which has the largest utility value are characterized by "passed green food certification, with famous brand and moderate price "; the preferences for each attribute of different individual consumers are quite different; the consumers'gender, age, education level, income status and family structure affect the level of consumer preference for three attributes; the consumers can be divided into the brand preference group, the price preference group, and the green certification preferrence group; by using of the three simulation methods, the market share as well as its changes are disscussed.The major innovation of this paper lies in its displaying the consumers preference of brand, price and green certification in a quantitative way.What's more, the application of the conjoint analysis is expanded.However,the results generalizion of this paper should be carful in view of some inherent defects of conjoint analysis and investigation method.Products in the future to change the subject, and expand the scope of investigation, based on the other product, the wider investigation,and the more product attributes. |
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