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.