Consumer satisfaction: A key factor of consumer loyalty and buying intention of a PDO food product

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between satisfaction, loyalty and buying intention as perceived by Spanish consumers. The food product object of analysis is the “Olive Oil from Bajo Aragon” with protected designation of origin (PDO).

Firstly, scale development was based on the review of the most relevant literature regarding food marketing and agribusiness. Then, to adapt the scales to the specific context of analysis, in‐depth interviews to a small sample of consumers were conducted, and the information contained in the preliminary scales was also judged by a group of experts in the food sector. After that, data were collected through a structured questionnaire, where the consumer was asked to indicate his/her level of agreement or disagreement with a series of statements based on a seven‐point Likert scale. After the completion of the fieldwork, a depuration process (exploratory and confirmatory analyses of reliability and dimensionality) was performed and, as a result, 223 valid questionnaires were obtained. Finally, a structural equations model was applied to analyze the relationships among consumer satisfaction, loyalty and buying intention.

The results show that a higher satisfaction leads to greater levels of loyalty and buying intention of the PDO “Olive Oil from Bajo Aragon”. In addition, in this specific context, the importance of consumers' perceptions regarding: the association of a traditional food product with a place of origin, territory, climate and know how of a geographical region; and the strict controls to which products under the protection are submitted by the regulatory councils were highlighted. Both aspects lead the consumer to infer a safety badge and food quality, which helps to develop feelings of satisfaction and loyalty, and a greater predisposition to buy the traditional product again.

The results can derive important practical implications when developing marketing strategies. Thus, it can be underlined that PDO should strengthen the consumer satisfaction (affective evaluation), emphasizing the differential characteristics to provide for the organoleptic factors like colour, taste and smell. All these factors increase the experimented feelings by consumers, so it is possible to improve the added value of the food product in order to achieve higher behavioural and attitudinal consumer loyalty. In fact, consumers' attitudes to this kind of products will increase the repurchase intention.

In this paper, the particularities of a traditional food product with PDO and the influence of these particularities on consumer satisfaction, loyalty and buying intention are analyzed. This fact implies a relevant contribution since the literature analyzing simultaneously the concepts of satisfaction, loyalty and buying intention is really scarce in this particular context.