The poultry industry occupies an important sector in Thai agriculture. The "Bird Flu" or "Avian Influenza (AI)" crisis, which first commenced in Thailand in 2004, has caused many problems. It has devastated the Thai chicken industry, the worlds fourth largest, with exports worth $A1.93 billion annually and employing hundreds of thousands of people. The European Union, the number two buyer of Thai chicken, and Japan, Thailands biggest customer, has banned imports of Thai chicken. / Locally, the marketing of chicken meat has posed a major economic problem because of a substantial fall in consumption. Many Thais, who learned about bird flu from the newspapers, have avoided buying and eating poultry as a simple precaution. Other Thais, who have continued to buy and consume fresh chicken meat, are doing so with caution. / This study attempted to examine perception factors and risk reduction strategies influencing consumers decisions to buy fresh chicken meat during a food risk situation in Thailand. In addition, an evaluation is made as to whether there is a difference between consumers perceptions and their purchasing decisions under specified demographic factors. / The current study focused on two key variables; namely, consumer perception factors and risk reduction strategies and their influence on Thai consumers purchasing decisions for fresh chicken meat. The four perception factors were 1) price, 2) product quality, 3) place, and 4) risk, based on studies by Schiffman and Kanuk (1997); Glitsch (2000), and Yeung and Morris (2001a). The risk reduction strategies, employed in this study, taken from previous literature (Glitsch, 2000); and Yeung and Morris, 2001b), include:1) purchasing reputable brands, 2) government control or guarantee labels, 3) purchasing from reliable outlets, 4) traceability, 5) avoiding “cheap prices”, and 6) personal controls. There is a long tradition for using demographic variables to explain the observed differences in consumption and food intake surveys. In this study, the demographic variables examined were age, gender, marital status, education, occupation, family size, and income. / Because the recognition of situational effects is an important guide to understanding and predicting consumer behaviour, the current study evaluated purchasing decisions in three situations: 1) in the current situation, do Thai consumers buy fresh chicken meat for consumption? 2) during the first bird flu crisis when there was a lot of adverse press on the effects of bird flu, did Thai consumers buy chicken meat for consumption? 3) in the future, if there is another bird flu crisis of similar severity, will Thai consumers be likely to buy chicken meat for consumption? / The research design was descriptive with the survey method used to gather data from the target respondents. Data was collected in six of Bangkoks largest markets, each located in a district with a population of approximately one million people. A total of 70 questionnaires were distributed in each of the six markets and 400 valid questionnaires were used to analyse the data. / The results showed that all four of the consumer perception factors, namely: price, product quality, place of purchase, and risk perception, influence purchasing decisions in the three different situations, in different ways. From the four perception factors, product quality had the highest influence on consumers purchasing decision, followed by risk and price perception. Place of purchase did not really influence their purchasing decision in the current situation. / Thesis (DBA(DoctorateofBusinessAdministration))--University of South Australia, 2007.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/267100 |
| Creators | Laurujisawat, Pornsri. |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | copyright under review |
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