PRODUCT ATTRIBUTES AND CONSUMER PREFERENCE AS DETERMINANTS OF WILLINGNESS TO PAY FOR NUTRITIONALLY ENRICHED EGGS

Abstract

The increasing demand of functional foods has highlighted the need to mark eggs with nutritional value but the reaction of consumers and readiness to sell and produce the products is poor in economies that are still developing such as Pakistan. The existing literature is mainly based on the developed markets and usually fails to explain the behavioural process by which the product characteristics determine the monetary valuation. This research fills this gap as it considers the influence of product attributes on consumer preference and subsequently willingness to pay premium-priced eggs enhanced with nutrients in the case of university students in Karachi, Pakistan. The research design was a quantitative and cross-sectional study conducted based on a structured questionnaire. The data were gathered among the students at the universities and the relationships involving the product attributes, consumer preference, the trust in the nutritional claims, prior purchase experience, and willingness to pay were tested by employing the Partial Least Squares Structural Equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The findings indicate that the product attributes also contribute a lot in the consumer preference with the introduction of the product attribute being able to explain it (R² = 0.799). The relationship between product attributes and willingness to pay is entirely mediated by consumer preference, and the model has been found to explain 79.2% with the variance in WTP explained by the model (R² = 0.792). Valuation behavior is also supported by trust in nutritional claims and previous purchase experience which proves the hypotheses put forward. The paper provides valuable new empirical evidence over the cases in Pakistan by incorporating behavior learning and attribute based theories that explain preference based valuation. These results can be helpful to policy-makers and manufacturers and present the basis of further longitudinal and cross-market studies.

Keywords: Nutritionally enriched eggs; Product attributes; Consumer preference; Willingness to pay; Functional foods; Pakistan