Determinants of milk buying decision: a comparison between traditional and generic brands

Abstract

The purpose of this present paper is to study the consumers buying behavior of long life milk, comparing generic brands (own) of supermarkets and traditional. Brazil has been showing a steady growth in milk production. With the second world dairy herd, we have productivity rates unfavorable and a domestic consumption growth consistently in the last years (SERVIÇO BRASILEIRO DE APOIO ÀS MICRO E PEQUENAS EMPRESAS - SEBRAE, 2010). Specifically, intend to evaluate the impact of consumers’ preferred attributes on the intention of buying the generic brands versus traditional. This research was conducted in two-steps to determine the consumers’ preferred attributes: the first step was a qualitative study, in which were interviewed 25 consumers of long life milk; the second step was a quantitative pilot-study (preliminary survey) with 194 consumers. According to the results, was proceeded to a second survey with 319 respondents to achieve the papers’ proposed goal. Two regression models were estimated, one for generic brands and the other for traditional brands. The final results pointed that the main consumers’ preferred attributes that influenced buying intention were (i) brand knowledge, brand tradition and brand trustworthiness and (ii) brand quality guaranties and brand origin. The regression models results (generic and traditional brands), compared using Chow test, showed differences between the two groups of brands (generic versus traditional), mainly in terms of price, taste and packaging.