Consumer Habits on the Market of Foods Made from Goat-Milk

Abstract

With the change of the consumption tendencies (TÖRŐCSIK, 2003) new demands appeared on the world market; the demand for special food is increasing. A class of the consumers that is willing to pay for quality, speciality has appeared and goat milk products meet these requirements (LUKÁCS, 1999). The European Union does not limit the development of the sector as goat milk products are not quoted. There is not a quantity limit defined, there are only quality minimums. Thus, it is free to increase production and also the demand for the products is reliant. The increasing interest in goat and its produces has made the research team pay attention to this issue and has resulted in the start of the survey. The main objective was: to reveal the consumers’ behaviour on the market of the goat milk products. The obtained answers of the research can give useful information to the marketing specialist of food, especially goat milk sector to define the consumers’ demands and differentiate the consumer segments and work out detailed marketing strategy. We believe that the obtained results are also useful for the common marketing organisations in developing effective marketing campaigns in order to improve the nutritional knowledge of the Hungarian consumers successfully. The research was based on the two internationally acknowledged methods of marketing survey, the so called ecoscopic or secondary and the demoscopic or primary methods. These results were obtained by focus group analyses, tasting interviews and country-wide survey. According to the results of the focus group analyses, all of the interviewed people consumed cheese, but only a few mentioned curd cheese and milk. Eighty percent of the participants of the tasting have consumed goat milk products before, while according to the country-wide survey this ratio is only 53 percent. The majority of goat milk product consumers mentioned cheeses, much fewer mentioned liquid milk and curd cheese. The share of the goat milk products is not surprising, as the processing plants mainly produce cheeses, and cheeses are mainly available in the shops. The country-wide survey also asked questions on the annual consumption frequency of goat milk products. This was analysed on a five-step scale. Based on the obtained results the consumption frequency of goat milk products in case of Hungarian consumers is not even low but basically infinitesimal. The highest figure belonged to the cheeses, with 17 times per year. Having seen the results of the analysis of the country wide survey we can state that almost two third of the consumers (64.5%) never bought any goat milk products and as few as only 35.5% of them bought any products. In Hungary, consumers buy goat milk products mainly in hyper- and supermarkets, many of them go to the local markets and often purchase directly from the producers. In case of the country-wide survey, the aim was to get information on the factors influencing the consumers’ purchasing decisions on goat milk products and other foods. The most important factors were the taste and quality of the product in case of purchasing goat milk products and other foods. In case of goat milk products, the healthiness of the product was more important than its price, while in case of other foods the third place was taken by the price and the fourth by the healthiness. The only influencing factor among the listed ones was healthiness with higher figure in case of goat milk products than other foods. The results of the tasting trial definitely show that the Hungarian consumers are highly satisfied with the quality of goat milk and its products. The country-wide survey has proven that the Hungarian consumers are satisfied with the quality of goat milk and goat milk products. During the tasting none of the people thought that goat milk products have too low prices. In case of the country-wide survey, none of the people thought that goat milk products have too low prices. The price of the products was said to be high by the people involved in the focus group interviews, however they are willing to pay a certain extra price. It was also found that the interviewed people do not know the brand names of goat milk products.