Factors That Influence Consumers To Consume Honey Marketing Essay

There are numerous of explanations when it comes to exploring the factors that influence consumers to consume honey products. The portrayal of honey congregated importance ever since it has been commonly used in both medical and domestic needs and as well as beauty needs. The oldest and most pioneer natural sweetening agent is honey where it has been exists for over centuries. (Aparna & Rajalakshmi, 1999). Honey is a foundation of readily accessible sugars, protein, acids, nitrogen, amino acids, minimal amount of minerals and a number of other micro quantities of modules like pigments, aroma, flavour, phenolic compounds, colloids, sugar alcohol and vitamins (Crane et al, 1975). It takes 50000 bees to produce 500 pounds of honey in one year. Overall, most of the honey in the world is produced by the Apis Mellifera which better known as the honey bee and the other one would be the Apis Cerana which is regarded as the eastern honey bee.

Average

Range

Standard Deviation

Fructose/Glucose

1.23

0.76 – 1.86

0.126

Fructose, %

38.38

30.91 – 44.26

1.77

Glucose, %

30.31

22.89 – 40.75

3.04

Minerals (Ash), %

0.169

0.020 – 1.028

0.15

Moisture, %

17.2

13.4 – 22.9

1.46

Reducing Sugars, %

76.75

61.39 – 83.72

2.76

Sucrose, %

1.31

0.25 – 7.57

0.87

pH

3.91

3.42 – 6.10

—

Total Acidity, mcq/kg

29.12

8.68 – 59.49

10.33

True/Protein, mg/100g

168.6

57.7 – 56.7

70.9

Table .1 Composition of Honey (National Honey Board, 1996)

In peoples’ perspective, the quality of the product will be the key success factor of honey product where industries of honey maker faced challenges for making and maintaining as well as preserving of honey products. Nevertheless, honey plays an essential role of contribution towards the medical field as it is generally healthy and popular. On the other hand, brand reputation of honey is going competitive around the world as countries such as India, Yemen, New Zealand, Australia, Saudi Arabia and etc. come in as big competitors to gain the largest honey manufacturer title. While for the pricing for honey is vary depending on the saturation, the level of harvesting, taste, colour, country origin and many more. Physical appearance also important as it plays an intrinsic and extrinsic role for consumers.

Get Help With Your Essay

If you need assistance with writing your essay, our professional essay writing service is here to help!
Find out more about our Essay Writing Service

Nowadays, honey is consumed all over the world nonetheless. To add on, the Americans in the US are the largest consumers of honey followed up by Chinese in China and the Germans in Germany. Though there has been a moderately steady of consumption of honey for the last five years, however the weather and superiority still maintained as the key factors manipulating the world market. (AAFRD, 2005). There have been studies on the average world consumption of honey which is about 220 grams per inhabitants per year. Thus, the average consumption of honey in developing and developed countries is 133 and 650 grams per inhabitants per year respectively (Napolitano et al, 2006).

With the increasing of market size and the increasing consumer demand each year, honey makers have to search for new approaches and to learn to understand the consumer need in order to increase their product satisfaction and customers’ loyalty. Thus, the increase in consumer’s satisfaction will affect positively towards product sales. Therefore, this research is a study on how quality of product, medical condition, brand reputation, physical appearance and pricing can affect the consumers’ satisfaction in purchasing honey products.

The manufacturing process of honey is simply beyond belief and amusing. The first stage will be the removal of full honeycombs from the hive. For the removal of honeycombs, the bee hive will have to be either immunise with smoke to force the bee to come out or simply sweep the bees off the combs gently and guide them back to hive or a separator board will be positioned to close the honey chamber off from the brood chamber. This is depicted in Diagram 1 and 2. When honey is finally squirted out, the comb is then reinserted carefully. Secondly, the honeycombs will then be unsealed where at least two-thirds capped are placed into a transport box and taken to a location where there is free of bees. Thirdly is the extraction of honey where the honey combs are inserted into an extractor which is a large drum that draws out honey. Then comes the processing and bottling where honey is poured into tanks and heated to 120°F (48.9°C) to liquefy the crystals. After that, the condition is left for 24 hour. Any bee parts or pollen that rose up are being skimmed off. Last but not least, the honey is then propels into jars or cans for shipment.

There are several methods for removing honey combs. The beekeeper can either sweep the bees off the combs and guide them back into the hive or inject a puff of smoke into the hive. When the bees sense the presence of fire, they gorge on honey in an attempt to take as much as they can with them before fleeing. Somewhat tranquilized by engorgement, the bees are less likely to sting when the hive is opened. Alternately, a separator board can be placed between the honey chamber and the brood chamber. When the bees in the honey chamber discover that they have been separated from their queen, they move through a hatch that allows them to enter the brood chamber, but not reenter the honey chamber.

Diagram 1 Removal of honeycombs

Source: http://www.madehow.com/Volume-5/Honey.html#b

A typical hive used in beekeeping.

Diagram 2 The Structure of honey comb

Source: http://www.madehow.com/Volume-5/Honey.html#b

Table 1: World honey production and consumption in 2005

Countries

Production

(1000 metric tons)

Consumption

(1000 metric tons)

No.

of bee hives

No.

of bee keepers

Ukraine

71.46

52

RussiaRussia

52.13

54

SpainSpain

37.00

40

GermanyGermany (*2008)

21.23

89

1,000,000

90,000

HungaryHungary

19.71

4

RomaniaRomania

19.20

10

GreeceGreece

16.27

16

FranceFrance

15.45

30

SerbiaSerbia

3 to 5

6.3

430,000

30,000

DenmarkDenmark (*1996)

2.5

5

*150,000

*4,000

United StatesUnited States of America (*2006, **2002)

70.306*

158.75*

2,400,000

12,029** (210,000 bee keepers)

CanadaCanada

45 (2006); 28 (2007)

29

500,000

13,000

ArgentinaArgentina

93.42 (Average 84)

3

BrazilBrazil

33.75

2

AustraliaAustralia

18.46

16

New ZealandNew Zealand

9.69

8

313,399

2602

ChinaChina

299.33 (average 245)

238

7,200,000

7,200,000

TurkeyTurkey

82.34 (average 70)

66

4,500,000

IranIran

3,500,000

IndiaIndia

52.23

45

9,800,000

South KoreaSouth Korea

23.82

27

VietnamVietnam

13.59

0

TanzaniaTanzania

28.68

28

EgyptEgypt (*1997)

16*

2,-00,000*

200,000*

Central African RepublicCentral African Republic

14.23

14

South AfricaSouth Africa (*2008)

~2.5*

~1.5*

92,000

1,790

Table 1

Source: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), August 2007.

Table 1 shows the world honey production and consumption in the year 2005. The available details in the table are production level (1000 metric per tons), consumption level (1000 metric per tons), number of bee keepers and bee hives. Countries that have been selected in this research are Ukraine, Russia, Spain, Germany (2008), Hungary, Romania, Greece, France, Serbia, Denmark, United States of America, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, China, Turkey, Iran, India, South Korea, Vietnam, Tanzania, Egypt and Central Africa Republic.

Problem Statement/ Research Questions

Consumers always confirm that the value or quality of the product is acceptable or equivalent to the amount of money they paid for. It is unquestionable that customer perceived value as the ratio of the perceived benefits (Monroe, 1990). In other words, customers always expect the highest and best quality of the product for what they had paid for.

There have been studies of forbidden honey imported in China by the United Kingdom and the European Union and Canada due to the content of the chemical, Chloramphenicol which is a type of slow process destructive antibiotic that can caused toxicity in human health. (Ingram, 2002). This is because large packers and manufacturers have no concern over business ethics and quality management by mixing the specific honey with the American honey in order to decrease their overall cost. Therefore it has become “cheap” honey that has commonly been used in daily intake. Some consumers have been deceived by cheaper price marketing strategies. Researchers argued that price promotion occasionally does not bring positive effect on purchase intention but negative effects.

There has been some figure of consumers that do not check the origin country of the honey from the container which eventually will lead to misinformation. Nevertheless, consumers do not have the initiatives to know more about the legal packaging and nutrition level as they presumed it’s totally safe to consume. They simply are being deceived by the fake messages. This practice may lead to the development of contraband or “fake” honey to be delivered globally through black market. Also, most of the commercial honey was thinned by added syrups.

There have been evidence to support the idea of product packaging can affect the consumers’ buying behaviour. All the aspect such as colour, shape, brand belief, designs, brand personality, and brand image plays an important role in affecting consumer’s buying behaviour in purchasing honey because consumer do not actually think intensely about all brands at all before they walked into the store to buy. More than 70 percent of purchase decisions are achieved through at the point of sale after a detailed market research is conducted (Connolly and Davidson, 1996).

Honey products have been developing from health supplements field to economic development field. In the past issue has triggered a lot of numbers of academicians and researchers to conduct a thorough research on this issue. Few research questions they arose are as follow:

What is the Malaysian’s level of understanding of honey products?

Does the quality of the products affect the consumption of honey products among consumers?

Does the medical conditions played an important role in affecting the consumers’ satisfaction and buying decision?

Does the brand reputation affect the consumption of honey products among consumers?

Is physical appearance really important in order to affect the consumers to purchase honey products?

What are the correlations between consumption of honey products and pricing?

Research Objectives

In order to answer all the research questions, the following objectives are clearly defined:

To determine the level of understanding of honey products among Malaysians.

To investigate the relationship between the quality of products and consumption of honey products.

To explore the relationship between the medical condition affecting consumption of honey products.

To define the relationship between the reputation and consumption of honey products.

To explain the relationship between the physical appearances which may affect the consumption of honey products?

To clarify the relationship of pricing affecting the consumption of honey products.

Significance of study

The topic on the factors that affect the consumers to purchase honey products has seldom been discussed in recent research. Upon the completion of this research shall grant more essential information and guidance to the honey maker industries as the honey served well in economics and health fields. Nevertheless, this research is beneficial to those who are interested in learning more about consumers’ behaviour toward honey products and factors affecting it.

Also, the independent variables served as a strong purpose to the honey maker industries as the research might help the industries to change the method and implement the necessary strategy in term of manipulating the strategy related to honey in order to enhance the competitive advantage in modern marketplace. Lastly, this research also studies the behavior and satisfaction of consumers purchasing honey products.

Honey industries have made a great impact on employment and economics in the agricultural and health field. People with experiences in honey and bees can easily being employed by honey manufacturer companies, pharmacies, traditional medical store and hospitals because those businesses lack of potential input (Mclane, 2012).

Scope of study

This research mainly focuses on middle age adults in Malaysia as they are the primary consumers of honey products because their percentage of buying intention is higher compared to young adulthood and elderly. The age of middle adulthood is 30 to 65 (Cattin and Wattink, 1982). The middle age adults are the most suitable candidates for this research because their physical fitness and mental obligation start to decrease as age is catching up to them or maybe they purchased honey products for their family usage. Therefore, they are the one who need honey products and most importantly is that they are the categorized group whom are willing and able to pay for honey products as supplements (Ee, 2012).

Operational Definition

The independent variables are quality of the product, medical condition, brand reputation, physical appearance, and pricing while the dependent variable is consumption of honey products.

Quality of product – The variety of types and characteristics of a specific product to its ability to meet given requirements and in degree of excellence.

Medical condition – The benefits of health which can be obtained by undertaking the product.

Brand reputation – The recognition which has increased the clearness and accessibility to information through mission statement, marketing and affiliation.

Pricing – Customers’ perceived value. Different pricing methods vary depending on the degree of importance on selection, estimation, evaluation of cost, comparative analysis and market situation.

Consumption of honey products – The act of consuming the honey and also the ways applying the product.

Consumer’s behavior towards honey products – Comportment of an individual or groups acquiring, using, and disposing of products, services, ideas or experiences. Also includes the study of understanding consumer thoughts, actions and feelings.

1.7 Organisational of Research

Chapter 1 discuss about the introduction of the honey products and factors influencing the consumers’ purchasing of honey products. Then, there is the background of the study followed up by the objectives and problem statement which has been clearly defined here. The background of the research mainly covers the managers who are part of catalyst of virtual product development as sample in this research. This chapter also covers the significance of the study, the scope of the study and the operational definition.

Chapter 2 is examine the past literature review that are related to this field, factors affecting the consumers to purchase honey products. This chapter is more on extracting the past researches done by researchers on the dependent and independent variables involved.

Chapter 3 will describe the research methods that were employed in conducting this research in order to find out the tendencies of the consumption of honey responding to the independent variables. The theoretical framework and hypothesis will be shown in this part .Lastly, the sampling design and data analysis method will be discussed in details in this part.

Chapter 4 express all the analysis of the data collected done by using the Statistical Process for Social Science (SPSS) version 17. The frequencies and percentage of the demographic profile is shown in this chapter. Three tests are done in this research to test the hypotheses which are the Reliability Test, Pearson Correlation Test and Multiple Regression Analysis.

Chapter 5 shows the discussion of the hypotheses .Each hypotheses is explained in details and the latter part of the research is the implications and recommendations for the research study. Lastly, conclusion is made to sum up the entire research.

Chapter 2

Literature Review

2.1 Introduction

The literature review is a documentation of the related studies from past researchers, with the objectives to deliver supporting evidence for the research. Furthermore, literature review is designed to provide a clearer preview and logical presentation to the studies.

In this particular research, the literature review is divided into three sections which consist of introduction, brief history, dependent variable and independent variable. The introduction will be the explanation of the meaning literature review while the brief history will be the description of past history of honey industry in the world. Nevertheless, the dependent variable will be the consumer’s behaviour of purchasing honey related products. On the other hand, the independent variables are the quality of products, medical condition, brand reputation, physical appearance and pricing.

2.2.1 Brief history of honey industry (world)

Honey has been in the history of mankind since 2100 B.C. where researchers found the evidence on the written wall of the Sumerian and Babylonian civilisation as well as in Egypt and India. Researchers even assumed that honey existed even earlier than the civilisations. Hunig was given as a supplementary English name for honey where it was then been well recognised as sweetener used by many people (Filippone, 2012). Back in those days, honey is nevertheless considered as essential in terms of food, beverages, furniture polishes and glosses as well as medical purpose (Crane, 1975). Honey has also often been used as practices of currency exchange, tributes or offerings (Ransome, 2002).

Honey industry in the world has faced a lot of obstacles such as global weather patterns in Argentina and Chile where the extreme temperatures and dry humidity affect the honey drastically and market manipulation of honey price in Europe. As a result, the US crop is estimated at the end of the year to decline to approximately 150,000,000- 160,000,000 pounds which is one of the lowest crops ever recorded the history of honey production (Phipps, 2012). Likewise, the honey production in 2005 had been decline to as much as five percent worldwide (Flottum, 2005). There has been research from Anton (1995) where farm management is practiced so that the organic food management can meet the Federal regulations of safety and quality of food supply including Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act and the Nutrition Labelling and Education Act.

Still, beekeeping has never failed to be one of the primogenital forms of animal husbandry the world has ever known. (McNulty et al, 2006). As an implication, honey has been serving as an important benchmark and standard for both consumers and suppliers in the honey industry ever since (Baltrusaityte et al, 2007). As nutrition knowledge has been expanded and was put as a priority in science field, many people were pretty well-aware of understanding the assortment and types of foods, their nutritional composition and human dietary in their daily life. Soon from gaining the knowledge, people were somehow able to indicate the relationship between different type and combination of food and the links and good health as well as food intake. (Valentine, 2000). Since then, honey industries have been making a giant leap as essential food supplement for human (Aparna and Rajalakshmi, 1999). Also, there has been a research defining the price of organic honey being relatively high in the market demand (Phipps, 2012).

2.2.2 Consumer behaviour towards honey products

Consumer behaviour is undoubtedly defined as the behaviour that consumers project in searching for, using, purchasing, evaluating, and disposing of products and services that they assume will satisfy their needs (Pelau, 2011). The term is defined in order to have a better understanding and information on the relationship between consumer behaviour and the marketing concept as well as market segmentation, targeting and positioning (Hawkins pg 11, 2010). Customer satisfaction is considered as the top notch of the whole idea of consumer behaviour as it’s defined as customers’ feelings towards a certain value of the product or service that was received as a result of using a specific organization’s proposing in precise use situations which is essential (Woodruff, 1993).

Own Total Product

Consumer Decision Superior Value

Process Expected

Competitors’ Total Sales

Product

Perceived Value

Delivered

Customers

Satisfaction

Figure 2.1 – Creating Satisfied Customers

Source: Consumer Behaviour: Building Marketing Strategy 11th Edition 2010 pg 24

Figure 2.1 shows on how to create satisfied customers especially for industries that grow from its emerging status into large scale. There has been a research showing that most of the consumers usually comprehend themselves bearing with risks instead of benefits (Reid, 2000 a,b). This occurrence is based on “habitualized” behaviour and decision making as most of the consumers always purchase it repeatedly until they are familiarized and put their trust in it which is better known as superior value expected. From the occurrence of sale, customers perceived value were delivered and satisfaction is obtained (Pelau, 2011). According to Phipps (2008), industries that sell natural products tend to generate a connection bond and send confident messages to consumers so that there will be an increase of consumption level, new products are developed, consumers’ perception value boosted and the increased entrance of higher quality products into the market.

Occasionally, there are consumers which want to obtain high quality of food products with unique and exclusive characteristics (Madas et al, 2011).Not overlooking that consumers always put their interest and their money into foods that are free of contaminants, pesticides, chemicals and other health risks so that they are somehow able to feel assured in their rational mind (Mintel Organic Foods, 2006, p.1). Some of the consumers react to the purchase decision making are sometimes based on past experience (Robert & Douglas, 2001). However, most of the consumers always purchase the product or service based on emotional aspect rather than rational aspect and it’s important to capture their buying decision by projecting superior value of the product or service which can be done through mass media and advertising. Consumers are usually influenced not only by economy but psychology as well (Leon et al, 2011).

Nonetheless, human behaviour can be best explained by the Theory Planned Behaviour (TPB) as the theory are widely used in managerial decision making in order to link between attitudes and behaviour of a customer (Sommer, 2011). It is the way of understanding on how an individual would react and behave in a specific manner which is influenced by attitudes, norms and perceived behavioural control (Smith et al, 2007). The Theory Planned Behaviour is a detailed development of reason-based actions which explained; “people do what they like and intend to do whereas people do not do what they dislike and not intend to do” (Fishbein, 1975). The fundamental elements of the Theory Planned Behaviour are behavioural beliefs and attitude toward behaviour, normative and subjective norms, perceived behavioural control and lastly the behavioural intention (Ajzen et al, 1986 & Chan et al, 1993). Behavioural beliefs are the understanding of consequences or particular behaviour while attitude toward behaviour is defined as progressive or adverse valuation of self-performance of the particular behaviour (Ajzen, 1991). Normative norm is an individual’s perception based on peer or family influence while subjective norm is an individual’s acuity based on societal normative pressure (Kuhl, 1985). Then again, perceived behavioural control refers to people’s perception of their ability to execute an assigned behaviour. Lastly, the behavioural intention is the autonomous probability that he or she will participate in a given behaviour (Committee on Communication for Behaviour Change in 21st Century, 2002). Mutually, the Theory Planned Behaviour has a higher rate of success in forecasting the intentions rather than the behaviour aspect (Armitage et al, 2001 & Sheeran, 2002 & Sutton, 1998).

Understanding consumers’ behaviour and purchasing patterns especially on product line are extremely crucial in order to create inevitable customers satisfaction level (Leon et al, 2011). Without potential consumers to purchase honey products, there will be decline opportunity for honey makers to survive in the natural food industry (Anton 1995).

2.2.3 Quality of Product

The meaning of quality refers to any situations and perception where consumers’ decisive roles and patterns are manipulated (Oliver 1997). Due to its differences, there are many meanings. Quality of product is well-defined as superiority or excellence of performance and apparent quality of a certain product which judged and assessed based on consumers’ perception and opinion (Aaker1991). A typical characteristic of an object to its degree of superiority is known as quality (Conklin & Thompson, 1993). There are people who favour quality as the originator or determinant of satisfaction because the customers are the one that define and perceive quality (Cronin & Taylor, 1992; Sullivan, 1993; Spreng and Mackoy 1996).

Product quality can be examined under two different categories which are objectives quality and perceived quality (Brunso et al, 2005). Measuring the quality is fixed by intrinsic and extrinsic value. The intrinsic value denotes to something that are interrelated to the physical form of the product such as colour, appearance and volume whereas extrinsic value is related to non-physical form of the product such as branding and product information (Zeithaml 1988 and Steemkamp 1997).

There has been a research done by Anderson and Sullivan in 1993 stating that consumers may have different preferences or obligations with respect to which characteristics of a product quality need to be improvised simultaneously, and, to what extent just to get more satisfactory result. This is because attitude of the consumers are credentials for satisfaction which links the relationships between quality perceptions and the product itself (Maria, 2003). Attitude of the consumers can either be constructive or inauspicious depending on the quality of product they received (Fishbein & Ajden 1975). Therefore, product owners need to find out the missing links and think out of the box to give solutions and improvisations on the products if it’s been found under dissatisfactory level in order to maintain customers’ loyalty (Pearson, 2006).

Product from industrialized countries such as China, United States of America and the European Union are supposed to have higher quality compared to those from less developed countries such as Vietnam and Iran (Cordell, 1992). For honey maker industries, the quality of honey is primarily branded by its sensorial, chemical, physical and microbiological characteristics. Each and every honey products that been manufactured have to be under license, approved by International Honey Commissions and meets the requirements by government’s food safety authority (IMAQE) in order to gain customers’ trust and loyalty (Mariana et al, 2011).

For Products

Performance

Serviceability  

Reliable

Reasonable Price  

Ease of Use

 Maintainability

Durability       

Simplicity

Aesthetics

Available     

Safe   

 Ease of Disposal

Figure 2.2- The content of quality for products

Source: http://www.bexcellence.org/What-Is-Quality.html

For a product to achieve its maximum potential quality in order to satisfy consumers requires to achieve most of the attributes such as outstanding performance to execute, reasonable price to purchase, durable, easily available everywhere, easily to be service, user friendly, simple as possible, safe, reliable, easily to maintain, aesthetics and easily to dispose (Based on Figure 2.2).

The tool for measuring quality which has been suggested by Petrick (2002) is divided into four sub groups which are quality outstanding, reliability, trustworthiness and consistency. On the other hand, consultation advice from industry experts and product samplings are often the key to maintain a high level quality of the product (Elder 2005; & Ross 2005).

Nonetheless when the quality of the product is good or reliable, consumers don’t mind and willing to pay more extra for these attributes (Figure 2.2) as they are well aware that the virtue of quality surpassed quantity (Cronin & Taylor, 1992 and Sullivan, 1993; Spreng and Mackoy 1996). However, consumers tend to understand the quality information provided on the label as well as based on their observations in order to purchase a certain product. A good quality product can constructs customer pleasure and delight while an inferior quality product will lead to customers’ dissatisfaction and irritation (Kotler & Armstrong 2010).

2.2.4 Medical Condition

Medical condition can be classified as condition which the occurrence of medical problem that needs to be treated or managed (George, 2012). Diseases from major to minor state or even the sign of disease which occurred on an individual is also considered as medical condition (Rod, 2009).

People nowadays have always been concerning about health preservation and improvement especially for themselves and their family (Schifferstein and Oude, Ophuis, 1998; Tregear et al, 1994) .Consciousness on the nutrition, health, and quality of food they eat has bec