Explore consumer’s attitudes and consumption of Norwegian salmon in Beijing

Abstract

Over the past decade, China has developed to be the fastest growth market of consumption of Norwegian Salmon in Asia. In addition, Beijing that is the capital of China with over 15 million populations provides great demand in seafood consumption. Understanding consumer’s attitude is the first step to explain the consumption. Meanwhile, some factors (e.g. norms, availability, and knowledge) have been confirmed to influence on the consumption. Therefore, the study applies the theory of planed behavior (TPB) model to explain the consumption of Norwegian Salmon in Beijing. Moreover, the TPB model, which includes four components of consumer’s attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavior control, and intention, has been successfully used in several contexts, including seafood consumption.

Norwegian Salmon has to compete with both imported and national seafood in Beijing, because it is suggested to be a high profiled imported product. The country of origin (COO) is confirmed to impact on both local consumer’s attitude and behavioral intention. To more understand consumers’ attitude and intention toward eating Norwegian Salmon as an imported food, the study adds three additional constructs of country image (Norway’s image), consumer ethnocentrism (CE) and conspicuous consumption (CC) as three COO effects within classical TPB model. The study found that the frequency of consumption of Norwegian Salmon is quite low that consumers taste Norwegian Salmon 2-3 times per year in general in Beijing. However, almost consumers evaluate Norwegian Salmon with very positive attitudes. The investigation reveals that the consumption of Norwegian Salmon are not simply influenced by some traditional factors, like quality, availability and knowledge, but also by family’s and business partners/colleagues’ expectation and pressure (SNs), country image. Moreover, the study found that both of CE and CC impact on country image as a mediator between the two constructs of CE and CC, and attitude.

In academic aspects, the extended TPB model (with country image, CE and CC) is the first time to be used in explanation the consumption of Norwegian Salmon in Beijing. The initial model explains 16.0% of variance of eating Norwegian Salmon. The study also bases on two-step approach to add some paths in the modified extended TPB model, and successfully predict the frequency of eating Norwegian Salmon. The modified extended TPB model presents that the frequency of eating Norwegian Salmon is significantly influenced by Subjective norms in addition to behavioral intention. Finally, 16.9 % of variance of behavior is explained by the modified extend TPB model.