| Summary: | 碩士 === 東海大學 === 食品科學系 === 96 === Due to the influence of economic changes, Taiwan is entering the M-type social structure, which means the income’s level and the consumption power have polarized the society. As the general standard of living boosting to new levels, the income gap between the lowest income group and highest income group start to widen, so a "new luxuries" class emerges. From the consumer perspective, this is a "trading up". While the effect of "new experience" is gradually taking over the purchasing behavior of consumers, they not only focus on external feelings, but also start to pay attention to internal and formation of the "inner experience". Such changes in consumer behavior and external environment have an impact on the domestic chocolate industry and the newly emerged cacao beverage stores in Taiwan. Consumers are no longer only satisfied the basic material which they need, they also want further experience and feelings those are arisen from psychological and securities and into the domain of psychical and spiritual satisfactions.
In the recent years, the domestic consumption of cacao related products volume were steady growing. Since this is a new products industry in Taiwan, the consumer’s behavior of cacao related products is significantly influenced by the external environmental changes. According to the results of the studies, consumers were divided into four groups: "actuarial type", "smart explorer type", " benign apolaustic type", and "fashion mode type". These four groups all share the feeling of the " experience" and the "new luxurism" in the purchase of cacao products. The Pearson’s assessment has found, among the measurements of consumer behavior, the "degree of experience" and the "level of involvement" is strongly correlated, while the "fashion mode" group demonstrates the strongest tendency of the "new luxuries" among all four groups. When the purchase behavior of cacao related products by general consumers were analyzed, it also found that the main factors for buying were "flavor", "taste" and "country that manufactures the chocolate products". Which we can see that the attention of consumers is gradually shifting from price consideration to quality concerns, and they are more quality conscious rather than quantity conscious. In addition, the main considerations for the purchase of cacao related products are identified as "for relaxation", "for relieving stress" and "enriching the living mode", and other similar emotional aspects. The reasons for purchasing cacao related products by consumers were not for children or as gifts any more, but more on the emotional dimensions to improve the general quality of their living qualities. These reasons influenced of the new luxurism on the consumer behavior and their concepts. Thus, according to this study, the rise of new luxurism for cacao related products can also created the new dimensions to the consumer’s sentiment and experiences, thus chocolate can be defined as a new luxury goods.
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