Survey: Product Description & Personal Traits
Our Participants
650 Chinese consumers
Age: 18 - 50
Location: 10 tier one cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Nanjing, Wuhan, Chengdu, etc.
Average monthly household income: above RMB20,000 (C$2,000)
Previous purchase of imported food: yes
When: 2023
What did we ask our participants in the survey?
We asked the participants to imagine that they were doing grocery shopping at their usual grocery store. They were shopping for imported steaks either for themselves or for their family. They were shown one of three product descriptions:
- brief information
- detailed information on quality (rational information)
- detailed information about the farmers (affective information)
The participants then answered the questions about how much they liked the product, how much they trust the producer, how much they were likely to purchase the product, their perceived power (how much they felt they were in control of their environment), and their demographics.
What did the results tell us?
The results showed that after controlling for some demographic variables such as purchase frequency, age and income, decision target (whom they were buying the product for) had a marginally significant effect on consumer attitude toward the product, trust in the product, and purchase intention toward the product. Specifically, these outcome variables were slightly higher when they were deciding for the family compared to when they were deciding for themselves.
There was also a significant interaction between product description and consumer power: for the product description with more rational information, there was no significant differences in the outcome variables between consumers with high or low power. For the product description with either brief information or more affective information, those with high versus low power trusted the product more, liked the product more, and were more likely to purchase the product.
What did these results mean to us?
Although Chinese consumers seem to like to rely on their feelings when making decisions (study 2), those who perceive they are in (vs. not in) control of their environment are more likely to be influenced by abstract information or affective information in decision making. Those with low power prefer to receive more detailed product information as they need such information to make sure of product quality.
We will conduct further analyses to find out whether consumer power is associated with any specific demographic variable, so that marketers will be able to identify these consumers and provide them with more detailed quality related information.
Buying for the family: the results also tell us that consumers are more likely to purchase imported food for their family instead of themselves. This may due to the family orientation of the Chinese consumers. For marketers, it may make more sense to highlight the enjoyment of family indulgence than highlight invidual indulgence.
Please feel free to contact us for more information of this study.