Lately, our Korean government has been heavily pressured to open our agricultural products markets due to the international trade environments being changed by the WTO order, DDA Agricultural Negotiations, FTA negotiations and the like. On the other h...
Lately, our Korean government has been heavily pressured to open our agricultural products markets due to the international trade environments being changed by the WTO order, DDA Agricultural Negotiations, FTA negotiations and the like. On the other hand, nations are fiercely competing with each other for agricultural production and food processing, while people throughout the world are more and more concerned about foods. In particular, consumers are most concerned about safety of foods. In such circumstances, various certification systems have been suggested to assure consumers of product liability, and even in the area of agricultural products and foods, a variety of quality certification system are being operated. Most of the preceding studies about quality certification of agricultural products and foods seem to have focused on environmental-friendly agricultural products or their quality certification or some traditional foods. The traditional foods quality certification system is designed by the government to certify the quality of those excellent foods manufactured and processed primarily using the domestic agricultural products and thereby, encourage the traditional food manufacturers/processors to produce and distribute high quality foods for consumers. Such a system is deemed to conduce much to consumption of our domestic agricultural products as well as people's health. The purpose of this study was to analyze the effects of the traditional foods quality certification system on consumers' intention of purchasing and thereby, provide for some data useful to promotion of the certified traditional foods. For this purpose, the researcher set up the following study points; first, traditional foods and their quality certification system would be reviewed briefly; second, values of the traditional foods quality certification system would be analyzed to suggest the ways to have the certified traditional foods evaluated correctly by consumers; third, consumers' perception of certifiers' reliability, certified foods quality and their price levels would be analyzed to determine the relationship between certification of traditional foods quality and consumers' perception; fourth, the effects of certifiers' reliability, foods quality and prices perceived by consumers on their intention of purchasing would be analyzed to examine consumers' responses to the traditional foods quality certification system depending on types of advertisement.
The results of this empirical study can be summarized as follows;
First, 'the product advertisements showing the certified marks' and 'the product advertisements emphasizing the certifier' were trusted more by consumers than 'the product advertisements with no mark of certification', and such a difference was also significant for the qualities perceived by consumers by advertising type. Namely, 'the product advertisements emphasizing the certifier' were perceived more positive by consumers. However, consumers' perceived prices did not significantly differ among advertising types. Lastly, certifiers' reliability, perceived quality and prices were found all to have significant effects on consumers' intention of purchasing.
As discussed above, this study analyzed the effects of the traditional foods quality certification system on consumers' intention of purchasing. Meanwhile, the certified traditional foods have been underevaluated by consumers despite their excellent quality, and therefore, our traditional foods manufacturers/processes are still petty. It is hoped that this study will provide for some data useful to those businesses manufacturing and processing the certified traditional foods and thereby, that their excellent foods will be properly evaluated by our consumers, effectively competing with the foreign foods imported. However, since this study is limited in terms of scope and depth of analysis due to some sampling and surveying problems, it is hoped that this study will be followed up by future studies approaching this issue from more diverse perspectives.