A study on the effects of selection attributes for agricultural products on using local food store

Purpose - As consumers' needs for purchasing fresh and safe food have been bigger in Korea, their interest in local food is also growing recently. So, the number of local food stores has been increased from 3 in 2012 to 103 in 2015. Local food stores should operate a business responding consumers' needs in order that local food stores are not to be a one-time fad. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to analyze the characteristics of consumers who use a local food store and provide helpful implications to design a strategy for sustainable growth of local food store. Research design, data, and methodology - In this study, Probit model was used for empirical analysis in order to examine the effect of purchase choice attributes of agricultural products, consumer's satisfaction, and their demographic factors upon the intention to use a local food store. After estimating coefficients of the probit model, marginal effects were calculated as a standard normal, and cumulative distribution is differentiated with respect to explanatory variables. To collect the data, questionnaire survey was carried out with the consumers using the local food store (Youngjin Nonghyup near to Jeonju city located in Jeollabuk-do). Result - The data analysis found that the more consumers are satisfied with local food store, the higher intention they have to use the local food store. In addition, it was known that the factors related to quality of agricultural products and shopping convenience among the purchase choice attributes have a considerable impact on the purchase intention of a local food store. In demographic factors, income was turned out to be an im-portant factor affecting purchase intention of local food. Such a result supports the hypothesis that high income consumers are likely to purchase local food, which is based on the inference that consumers who have a high income tend to pursue wellbeing life. Futhermore, information delivery, through a reputable media source among general factors, was known to play an important role in forming an intention to purchase local food. According to the analysis of marginal effects, probability of purchase intention of a local food store is increased by 11.4%, if a monthly average income of a household is above 4.5 million Won(Korean currency). If purchasing satisfaction with local food stores is high, the probability of purchase intention would be increased by 24.1%. Likewise, such a probability goes up by 8.7%, 5.8%, respectively as an increasing one unit of quality of agricultural products and shopping convenience of local food stores, respectively. Conclusion - For attaining sustainable growth in a local food store, it is considered necessarily to establish a proper store operation system to meet consumers' needs, especially for quality and shopping convenience of local food. Moreover, as it was found that appropriate communication through media source has a positive effect on the intention to use local food store, PR activity seems to be necessary to expand the consumers' demands for local foods.