Proceedings: 3rd International Conference on Food and Agricultural Economics: ANALYSIS OF CONSUMPTION BEHAVIOUR AND CONSUMER PROFILE FOR TABLE EGGS: A PILOT STUDY FOR EGG CONSUMERS IN TURKEY

The purpose of this study is to investigate consumer attitudes and behaviors towards table eggs in order to analyse the consumer profiles. It is aimed to create possible linkages between the obtained consumer groups and table eggs consumption frequencies. The data employed in this paper were taken from a face to face cross-sectional survey conducted with 547 individuals in the major cities (İstanbul, Ankara, İzmir, Trabzon, Adana, Van, and Gaziantep) of the seven regions of Turkey during the period February-May 2017. The answers of the survey questions were designed based on Likert-type scale in order to make the analysis. The data were analysed using descriptive statistics, Principal Component Analyse (PCA) with Varimax rotation and ordered probit regression methods by SPSS© 21 and STATA© 13 software’s. Results show that nutrition, taste, health and freshness are the main factors effecting consumers’ table egg consumption preferences. To detect the perceived differences among the consumers by creating clusters a Principal Component Analyse was performed and 5 consumer groups (suspicious and eco-sensitive, marketing consciousness, enthusiasts, food security sensitive and reluctant) with different characteristics were obtained on the preference for table eggs (KMO: .754; Bartlett's Test Sig: 0.000). Later these 5 egg consumer groups were associated with consumption frequencies by the ordered probit regression model. The analysis show that three of these consumer groups were found to have a significant relationship with the consumption frequencies. The marginal impacts were also calculated to show consumption position and structure of these consumer groups for each group of consumption frequency.