Abstract

This study aims at testing consumers’ preference for natural products behind buying decisions and exploring moderating factors as rural life experience and gender for their effects on natural preference. With the help of implicit association theory, we used IAT (Implicit Association Test) to measure the remoteness between positive words and natural products to identify whether there is an implicit preference. And we examined the moderating effects through online research in China. Three hundred one participants have joined this experiment. The result shows that Chinese consumers do have an implicit preference for natural products. When consumers had more than five years of rural life experience, their preference for natural products was significantly higher than those without. However, gender did not make any significant difference, except that women have more preference for nature in the field of food. Our conclusion not only enriches the understanding of consumer behavior but could also help product designing and development, particularly in the food area.

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