Consumer Preferences for Cheese with Focus on Food Safety—A Segmentation Analysis

Abstract

This research work analyzes Albanian urban consumer preferences and purchasing behavior related to cheese, focusing on food safety and related attributes, including origin, packaging, and certification. This paper is based on a structured survey targeting urban consumers. The analysis consists of a two-step cluster and descriptive statistics. The clustering was based on key sociodemographic variables, namely, gender, education, and age. The results show that the local cheese is preferred to imported cheese, and the main sources of food safety guarantee are the producer name/brand and knowing the seller. Most consumers across all five identified clusters preferred buying unpacked cheese to packed cheese. The cluster of educated female consumers preferred to buy cheese mainly in supermarkets compared to other clusters that preferred convenience shops. Consumer clusters with a university education appeared to be more informed about both HACCP and ISO compared to other (less educated) consumer clusters. Low trust in state institutions to guarantee food safety calls for the need to strengthen their capacities, professionalism, and awareness engagement with consumers.

Greek Semi-Hard and Hard Cheese Consumers’ Perception in the New Global Era

“…Our results indicate that the purchase selection of cheese by the consumers has not changed through the pandemic, since the cross-shopping behavior of consumers for food studied for more than a decade or so [43] provides the supermarket as the first choice, even reaching 76.4% for cheese [44], comparable with our finding of 90% after the pandemic. Another study within the pandemic in Albania also proved the first selection choice of the supermarket for traditional local cheese purchase among educated male and female participants, with lower percentages, however, around 40% [27]. Laguna et al report a reduction in shopping frequency but no changes in shopping location during the pandemic [45].…”

“…Most hot pepper cheese consumers preferred their cheese with higher heat intensity and were also motivated by the visual characteristics of it [26]. A segmentation analysis conducted by Zhllima et al revealed that local cheese is preferred to imported cheese, and the main selection criteria for food are the producer name/brand and knowing the seller, with educated female consumers buying cheese mainly in supermarkets [27]. Attitudes for sustainable mountain cheese show the influence of green consumers' values on the brand choice and the strong relationship between the values of green consumers and animal well-being [28].…”

Consumer attitudes and perceptions towards chilled ready-to-eat foods: a multi-national study

“…The clustering solution is considered poor when the silhouette measure is < 0.20, values of > 0.50 indicate a good and intermediate values an acceptable clustering solution (Mooi and Sarstedt 2011). Two-step cluster analysis is considered to be more accurate and reliable compared to other clustering methods and was extensively used in different fields (Tkaczynski 2016) and in numerous consumer studies (Geeroms et al 2008;Miloradovic et al 2021;Zakowska-Biemans 2011;Zhllima et al 2021).…”