| Summary: | 碩士 === 嶺東科技大學 === 經營管理研究所 === 97 === Due to modern people’s growing concern for health and environmental protection, organic agricultural products have gradually become a public issue. Presently in Taiwan, organic agricultural products are available mostly in more commercially organized outlets such as supermarkets and dedicated stores. However, before they are put on the shelves, most of these products have already gone through so many hands and consumers sometimes have no idea where the organic product originally comes from. As a response to such a problem, a new sales channel for organic agricultural products has been introduced into Taiwan from overseas – the “farmers’ market.” As it is still in the embryonic stage and its potential is still unclear, the author of this paper therefore decided to investigate the consumer behavior on the farmers’ market to establish the characteristics of market consumers and offer them as suggestions for improving the management of organic farmers’ markets to meet consumer demands.
As part of this study, questionnaires were administered to survey the consumers of four regular organic farmers’ markets in the country. Out of the 350 copies issued 335 valid samples were retrieved. Factor analysis was conducted and organic farmers’ market consumers were classified into six lifestyle groups. Cluster analysis was then performed and the consumers were further separated into three groups according to the differences of their lifestyles. The first was the “simple life group” the members of which valued family life, consumed rationally and practically, and led their lives centering on religious faith. The second was the “fashion group” that followed fashion trends while religious belief and health also made a part of life. The third was the “health group” whose members kept track of new health knowledge, were interested in trying novel things, but cared less about religion. Based on such grouping, the Chi-square test and analysis of variance were applied to examine the validity of the various hypotheses.
The results revealed significant differences between the sources of information, types of purchases and motives of visits among organic farmers’ market consumers with dissimilar lifestyles, whereas consumers with varied lifestyles appeared significantly different in their recognition of organic farmers’ markets and organic agricultural products. In addition, the recognition variation also resulted in significant differences in the number of visits these consumers paid to organic farmers’ markets.
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