Analysis Of The Marginal Changes Of The Purchase Decision-making And WTP(willingness To Pay) Of Consumers

In recent years, with the increase of the incomes of people and the enhancement of their demand for food quality, people have a higher and higher demand for high-quality fruits and vegetables. With the decrease of tariff, imported fruits enjoy obvious advantages over homemade fruits in terms of brand, quality and appearance. Since the policy of "zero tariff fruits" was put into effect in various countries in ASEAN in the summer of2006, consumers can purchase cheaper imported fruits. Furthermore, the change of the purchase decision-making will exert an influence upon the plantation decision-making of Chinese fruit-farmers. Therefore, while importing fruits into Chinese market, we should probe into consumers’behavioral law toward imported fruits, so as to provide reference to the formulation of Chinese policy of fruit industry.To predict the consumption behaviors of consumers toward new products, the people in the academic circle have been extensively applying Contingent Valuation Method (CVM). However, this method demonstrates the following unreasonable points:(Ⅰ). Considering strategic behaviors, the WTP prices of consumers are inconsistent with those of actual payment;(Ⅱ) The WTP reply made by consumers under investigation is only one made under a contingent circumstance, while the WTP under a real purchase circumstance will change with the environment existing at that time. In addition, when consumers receive a different external stimulation within the period of real purchase investigation, they will make a different change;(Ⅲ) We tend to ignore the estimation of purchase quantity during the WTP investigation and research, so we cannot predict the market share of this article.With imported fruits labeled "top-quality American fruits" as its research object, this research focuses on mending the defects of research methods mentioned above. By sorting out the investigation data about the fruit consumption of1192consumers in Nanjing, we have derived the real willingness of payment of some consumers by means of experimental design in questionnaires, established a dual choice model, as well as analyzed the influence of various types of features and existing fruit consumption quantity of consumers on their purchase decision-making and WTP. We have chiefly derived the following three major conclusions:(1) The real willingness of payment of consumers to this type of fruits can be obtained;(2) The purchase decision-making and WTP toward this new type of fruits can be explained with past, present and future change of consumption quantity of fruits as the consumption data of substitutes;(3) The purchase decision-making and WTP of consumers toward this new type of fruits are subject to the influence of demographical features, income level, risk preference factor, etc..