Assessment of consumers' perception and cognition toward table grape consumption in China

Purpose – The paper aims to understand consumers' perception and cognition toward table grapes, which focuses on the most important attributes, consumption consequences and personal values of grape consumption and the relations among them. Design/methodology/approach – The study related grape consumption with consumers based on Means-end chain analysis. The data were gathered with both laddering interviews (n=37) and questionnaire survey returned by 843 individuals in 31 provinces of China. The data were firstly processed by SPSS software and descriptive statistics was adopted to evaluate consumers' awareness. Furthermore, MECanalyst software was opted for, to construct the hierarchical relations of table grape consumption. Findings – The findings are that consumers consume grapes based on their functional cognition and sensory perception. The quality-orientated characters are deemed to be the most important grape attributes, healthy and practical function are the main expected benefits and desired values...

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