Food safety concern: Incorporating marketing strategies into consumer risk coping framework

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the incorporation of marketing elements into consumer risk coping strategies affects consumer purchase decision during periods of food safety concern.

This research used a structured questionnaire administered to a convenience sample of 216 respondents. By using logistic regression, a consumer risk coping framework incorporating marketing strategies was successfully developed to test the impact of brand and quality assurance, price reduction, availability in all stores and endorsement from an independent organization, which may not act alone but combine with each other during food purchase.

The research confirms that consumers adopt risk coping strategies in time of food risk concern and their coping strategies include marketing elements such as brand and quality assurance, price reduction, availability in all stores and endorsement from an independent organization.

The framework helps marketers to predict the effect of their marketing plan by incorporating consumers' risk coping strategies, in turn to improve consumers' purchase intention when perceived food safety risk exists.

This research demonstrates how marketers can incorporate marketing strategies in a consumer risk coping framework, in order to provide an insight for the industry to evaluate the effectiveness of their marketing strategies in times of food safety concern.