How Do Consumers’ Food Values across Countries Lead to Changes in the Strategy of Food Supply-Chain Management?

Abstract

Although one of the main goals of supply-chain management is to maximize consumer values, the research to date has mainly focused on the supply side. In the case of the food industry, understanding consumer needs and maximizing its utility are essential. In this study, we analyze consumers’ 12 meta-values (e.g., safety, taste, health, price, environment, etc.), then suggest the strategy of food cold-chain management satisfying consumers’ perception. We focused on consumers from three countries in Asia: Korea, China, and Japan. The survey was conducted with over 1000 consumers in those three countries, and a random parameter logit model was utilized to determine the importance of each food value that could affect consumers’ food choice. Similarities and differences were both found in share of preference of each food value across countries. While safety is one of the top three values in all three countries, naturalness and nutritional value ranked among the top three only in China. To propose the consumer-centric strategy of food cold-chain management, we investigated the relationship between each food value and each node of supply chain based on the big data analysis. It shows that consumers prefer when the entire supply chain is managed where each node is organically connected with each other instead of individual nodes being managed separately. Further, strategies for food cold-chain management should be developed differently by country, incorporating differences of consumers’ preferences on food value. These results would motivate governments and companies related to food cold chain to reconsider their marketing strategies on the import and export food market.

Comparing consumer preferences for sustainable dairy activities among countries

“…Supporting the working environment ranks higher in Japan than in the other four countries. However, previous food value studies have revealed that Japanese consumers rank fairness, which partly includes a value corresponding to the activity for workers in this Same superscripts in each row indicate insignificant differences in BW ratio score distribution study, relatively lower (Jo and Lee 2021;Abe et al 2021). Although the definition of fairness in previous food value studies is broader than that of the activity for workers in this study, a significant factor causing the discrepancy may be a high awareness among the Japanese regarding the working environment because of the COVID-19 pandemic and corresponding limitations on daily activities (e.g., staying at home), which has social impacts (e.g., decrease in income and increase in unemployment).…”

“…In previous studies on food valuation, the said activity corresponds to safety, taste, and nutrition. Food value studies in the USA and Norway (Bazzani et al 2018) and in Japan (Jo and Lee 2021;Abe et al 2021) have revealed that safety was the first to third most important value, while taste and nutrition were the second to fifth most important values. Compared with these studies, the activity to ensure the quality and safety of milk ranks relatively lower in France, the Netherlands, and Italy.…”

“…This activity corresponds to animal welfare in previous studies on food value. Animal welfare ranked lower in Japan (Jo and Lee 2021;Abe et al 2021), while it ranked middle in the USA and Norway (Bazzani et al 2018) and higher in the UK (Jackson et al 2020). A contemporary concept of animal welfare was developed in western countries and subsequently introduced in Japan.…”

“…Thus, BWS1 has been used in international comparison studies across various research fields (e.g., Auger et al 2007;Cohen 2009;Lee et al 2011;Cheung et al 2018). In the field of food research, BWS1 studies have compared consumer food values between the USA and Norway (Bazzani et al 2018), Japan, China, and Korea (Jo and Lee 2021), and Japan, Taiwan, and Indonesia (Yang et al 2021), as well as investigated the factors that affect wine purchasing among several countries (Cohen 2009). For details on the advantages of using BWS1 for the international comparison of preferences for items, refer to Cohen (2003Cohen ( , 2009, Muller Loose and Lockshin (2013), and Heo et al (2022).…”

How to build a cold chain supply chain system for fresh agricultural products through blockchain technology—A study of tripartite evolutionary game theory based on prospect theory

“…Rong et al [ 25 ] showed that as China’s income and education levels increase, consumers will become more accepting of paying the cost of cold chain logistics and will pay relatively higher premiums. Jo et al [ 26 ] analyzed 12 meta-values of consumers and proposed a food cold chain management strategy to meet consumer perceptions.…”