A Study Of Relationship Between Perceived Risk And Supermarket Fresh Food Buying

Since Chinese reform and opening up, the domestic retail format of fresh food is increasingly diversified. Wet market and supermarket have become two main formats. As for fresh food, why do some consumers buy it in wet market and others in supermarket? Domestic literature has analyzed this issue. These researches have the same premise that the consumers have complete rationality and make decision according to the principal of maximization of utility. These researches denied the internal factor such as consumer's mental character and psychology. In consequence, they attribute the reason to the external factors such as price, perish ability, shopping environment and so on. But actually, consumer behavior is influenced by internal factors such psychology, perception, individuality, life style and so on. So, internal factors should be analyzed further. According to the consumer behavior theory, Perceived Risk has been regard as an important internal factor influencing consumer behavior. This paper will analyze the relationship between the Perceived Risk and the willingness of supermarket buying.According to previous literature about the dimensionality of Perceived Risk, this paper chooses five aspects: financial risk, functional or performance risk, physical risk, psychological risk, social risk, time risk. The paper concentrates on the relationship between the five aspects of the perceived risk and the willingness of supermarket buying. Meanwhile the model contains the impact of the wet market into consideration.More than two hundred questionnaires were distributed to the consumers in the city of Nanjing, which asked the participant to evaluate perceived risk of the fresh food and the willingness of supermarket buying. The study discovered that there is a respectively positive relationship between psychological risk, functional or performance risk, time risk and the willingness of supermarket buying. No remarkable relationship between financial risk, social risk and the willingness of supermarket buying. As for the impact of the wet market, three hypotheses were found to be untrue.Related findings in this paper are meaningful to the supermarket: firstly, supermarket should insure the quality. Secondly, supermarket should enhance the guarantee of food safety. Thirdly, Supermarket should process the fresh food properly and enhance the one-off buying model. Additionally, supermarket should make use of the advantages such as the guarantee of food safety, brand and one-off buying model while competing with wet market.