Consumer’s preference and buying behaviour towards food products of farmer producer companies

Abstract

Food industry is one of the fast growing sectors and consumers’ preferences play a major role in development of this sector. Farmer Producer Companies are established not only to support the production but to involve in value addition so as to increase their income over a period of time. FPCs are primarily involved in various productions and also some extent in value addition and trade activities. This study aims to identify the consumers’ preferences and buying behavior towards the FPC which are involved in products and brands. Consumer survey has been conducted in four different farmer producer companies in Southern district of Tamil Nadu. Among the buyers, married women consumers visiting FPCs were more in number compared to men. Most frequently visiting buyers were the middle aged (30 to 40 years), middle income category (Rs. 7500 – 10000 / month) and most of them were farmers and employees. Average amount spent on purchase of food products was between Rs. 2000 and 4000 (46.67% consumers). Groundnut oil was largely preferred by the customers and 96.00 percentage of the respondents purchased two liters per month. In case of Chilli, 42.55 per cent of consumers bought 1 kg per month and the preferred pack size was 500 gram. At the same time, 46.15 per cent consumers bought 500 gram sambar masala per month and preferred pack size was 500 g. Black gram was purchased twice a month by most of the consumers. Good quality, reasonable priced and native materials were the main factors influencing the consumers to buy the products from FPCs.