Influence Of Food Quality Signals On Consumers’ Purchase Decisions

With the development of the economy and improvement of income level, People’s consumption habits and concept has undergone great changes and they have higher requirements for food safety and quality. However, the domestic environmental pollution, asymmetric information, absence of government regulation resources result in frequent incidents of food safety. It’s not optimistic about domestic food safety issues. The trust nature of food products leading to food market is a typical asymmetric information market, and the asymmetric information leading to "moral hazard" and "adverse selection" and other issues. Therefore, how to alleviate information asymmetry and improve the efficiency of market allocation is an urgent problem.In order to gain competitiveness, the enterprises often signal product quality to for the consumers’ request on food information. But the effectiveness of a quality signal is based on the premise that consumers can accept and endorse the intrinsic value of that signals, to reduce the asymmetric information, In order to induce enterprises to improve its’quality and send signal quality actively, we need to get further understanding of consumer’s awareness and acceptance of the quality signals, and of the factors affecting the consumer’s awareness of those signals. Therefore, this research, based on food signals theory analysis through questionnaire survey of210consumers in Chengdu, analyzes consumers’ cognition of food quality signal, and makes a quantitative analysis of the factors that impact the customers’cognition empirically. The research results can provide a new perspective and ideas for food safety issues and can help companies choose better food quality signal and help government establish more effective food safety-related information to reveal the mechanism provided empirical basis.Finding from this research are as follows:Reputation signals and certification have a positive impact on consumers, Consumer use reputation signals more often than certification in the purchase of fresh milk products. For the specific brands, consumers prefer Mengniu brand, followed the Xinxiwang and bright brand; for the specific certification signals, consumer prefer ISO9001certification, followed by the organic brands and HACCP certification. As for consumers’demographic factors, men, young people, high income levels and the healthier consumers are more likely to use certification during the purchase of milk; women, elderly, low income levels and bad healthy consumers use certification signals less. What’s more, educated consumers use brand less often during the purchase.According to the conclusions, the paper makes a few suggestions about the enterprises how to use food quality signal:Firstly, strengthen brand building and enhance brand image, Secondly, eliminate the information asymmetry through certification, Finally, Develop different strategies for different market segments. What’s more, there are some suggestions about the government how to improve management capabilities:publicity quality signal, build security identification systems, use legal means to establish credibility of food.