Economicity and sustainability influence the purchase intention of coffee consumers

Abstract

Understanding the consumer’s preferences and behavior offers the possibility to understand the acceptance or rejection of certain products and to encourage the creation of sensory marketing. In order to analyze the study hypotheses that the nonsensory characteristics allow of the creation of factors that influence the purchase intention, and that consumers can be grouped according to the attributes evaluated at the time of purchase, the data were subjected to an exploratory study and analyzed by the multivariate technique. Factor analysis was used to determine which attributes are important for the decision to purchase coffee, and the cluster analysis was used to define consumer groups of coffee beverage. The number of coffee consumers participating in the study were 841, who answered an online questionnaire. Two factors – economicity and sustainability – influence the purchase decision, which resulted in four groups of consumers. The segmentation of the coffee market, based on important attributes at the time of purchase, follows a national trend by which consumers who look for brand, price, and product quality show that they are concerned about the environment.