UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS ERASMUS UNVERSITY ROTTERDAM HO CHI MINH CITY INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES VIETNAM THE NETHERLANDS VIETNAM – THE NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FOR M.A IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS FACTORS OF CONSUMER’S CHOICES: A REVEALED PREFERENCE ANALYSIS FOR 3IN1 COFFEE BY NGUYEN VAN VIEN MASTER OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY, November 2016 UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL STUDIES HO CHI MINH CITY THE HAGUE VIETNAM THE NETHERLANDS VIETNAM - NETHERLANDS PROGRAMME FOR M.A IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS FACTORS OF CONSUMER’S CHOICES: A REVEALED PREFERENCE ANALYSIS FOR 3IN1 COFFEE A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS By NGUYEN VAN VIEN Academic Supervisor: TRUONG DANG THUY HO CHI MINH CITY, November 2016 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would first like to thank my thesis supervisor Dr. Truong Dang Thuy of the Vietnam – The Netherlands Programme (VNP) at Ho Chi Minh City University of Economics. He consistently allowed this paper to be my own work, but steered me in the right the direction whenever he thought I needed it. I acknowledge the contribution of Dr.
Nguyen Ba Thanh (IUH) as the second reader of this thesis, and I am gratefully indebted to him for his very valuable advices on building idea for this thesis. I would like to express my gratitude to the VNP officers who were involved in my thesis process by updating thesis schedule and providing good condition for my research process. Without their passionate participation, the thesis process could not have been successfully conducted. Finally, thanks are also due to my classmates for providing me with unfailing support and continuous encouragement throughout my years of study and through the process of researching and writing this thesis.
This accomplishment would not have been possible without them. Nguyen Van Vien Ho Chi Minh City, November 2016 Page i ABSTRACT 3in1 coffee is known as an important product of instant coffee market in Vietnam, especially in Ho Chi Minh City. The reason of that comes from the benefits which 3in1 coffee brings to consumers in term of convenience, product quality, and appropriate price. In the above context of 3in1 coffee market, the main objective of this study is to identify the determinants of consumer’s choices in 3in1 coffee market such as price, main ingredients, packaging, manufacturer, discount, and weight promotion.
This study is a practical research with the basis of random utility theory. Specifically, empirical result is produced from the estimation of conditional logit model for the dataset which is collected from consumers in Ho Chi Minh City in 2016. The survey process relies on the revealed preference method with several additional hypothetical scenarios. The main finding of this study emphasizes the importance of main ingredients, packaging, and manufacturers of 3in1 coffee in consumer’s choices.
It is recognized that price may not matter consumer’s choices. However, consumers love discount and weight promotion. In addition, several manufacturers enjoy positive marginal utility of price for consumers while the others enjoy the negative one. On the other hand, price changes may give small effects on choice probability of 3in1 coffee products.
According to those empirical findings, implications have been employed for manufacturers in order to understand more about 3in1 coffee market, widen their market share, and increase their profits. Page ii TABLE OF CONTENT Chapter Page Acknowledgement. ii Table of content. iii List of tables .v List of figures.
Scope of study. Random utility theory. Random utility model forms. Random utility model for beverage or food.
The investigation of coffee’s attribute. Consumer’s social-demographic characteristics. Revealed preference method. Attributes of coffee.
Data and empirical result. Determinants of consumer’s choices for 3in1 coffee. Price and consumer’s utility of 3in1 coffee by manufacturers. Price change and choice probability.
Marginal utility of price for respondents. Discount and weight promotion and consumer’s utility for 3in1 coffee. Manufacturers, social-demographic characteristics and consumer’s choices for 3in1 coffee. xi Page iv LIST OF TABLES Table 2.
Importance of factor on consumer’s coffee preferences. List of suggested attributes. Volume share and value share of main manufacturers. List of all available 3in1 coffee products.
District, super-market, and the number of respondents. Descriptive statistics of the sample. Frequency of social-demographic characteristics. Factors of consumer’s choices for 3in1 coffee.
Marginal utility of price for respondents by alternative. All 19 alternatives and their attributes. Price fluctuation among super-markets. Consumer’s choices change among various choice scenarios.
Regression result of equation (3. Regression result of equation (3. xxiv Page v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 4. Frequency of choice of each alternative by gender.
Alternative and gender, occupation, income, and frequency of 3in1 coffee consumption of respondents. Change of consumer’s choices in various choice scenarios. Price and consumer’s utility by manufacturer. Price changes and choice probabilities of alternative 2, 8, 15, 18 in case of all choice scenarios.
All 19 alternatives for survey process. Consumer’s utility along current price values .xxv Page vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1. Research problem In recent years, coffee is an important product of industry sector, agriculture sector, and service sector in Vietnam. According to historical data of International Coffee Organization (ICO), beside Brazil, Vietnam is one of the key countries in coffee production and consumption in the world with 19.4 percent of total coffee production, and 4.5 percent of domestic consumption.
Annual yield of Vietnam coffee production increases by 21 times in the period 1990 – 2014 (ICO, 2015). The volume of coffee export in Vietnam contributes more than 2.4 percent of GDP in 2012 (Vietnam Ministry of Industry and Trade, 2012). Based on the report of AC Nielsen (2015), 3in1 coffee market in Vietnam are contributed by many manufacturers of which five main manufacturers are Vinacafe, Nestlé, Trung Nguyen, Fes Vietnam, and Tran Quang. In 2015, total volume share of five main manufacturers is 88 percent (Vinacafe: 38%, Nestlé: 19%, Trung Nguyen: 14.2%) compared to about 99 percent in 2014.
Moreover, in term of value share, 3in1 coffee products comprise 83 percent of total value of instant coffee market. In term of package, bag, box, and sachet are three main kinds of package with 99.9 percent of volume share. Therefore, it is concluded that total demand of 3in1 coffee is relatively high compared to other instant coffee products and the competition among manufacturers is also intense in order to capture more market share. Due to the high demand of consumers, especially young consumers, many manufacturers have diversified their 3in1 coffee products in term of brands, prices, segments, packages, pack size, promotion, main ingredients.
For example, five main manufacturers including Vinacafe, Nestlé, Trung Nguyen, Fes Vietnam, and Tran Quang provide 27 different kinds of 3in1 coffee in term of main ingredients, packaging, and brands. Moreover, the competition among these manufacturers is also reflected in the aspect of prices and promotions. Price increase could help manufacturers enjoy the benefits from the increase of profit; however, they may also suffer the decrease of quantity sold. Beside price change, manufacturers could conduct promotion activities in order to increase the number of consumers who know about their products or their brand names.
Promotion activities are conducted through many forms such Page 1 as weight promotion, additional sachets, or a gift of related product, for example, spoon, plastic cup, or glass cup. Thus, two important questions are raised that: (1) What are important factors which affect consumer’s choices?, and (2) Do price changes and promotions possibly help one manufacturer to gain consumers from the others? 1. Research objective According to Batsell and Louviere (1991), experimental methods relied on the framework of both econometric analysis and psychometric analysis and it is the most popular method to do researches about consumer’s preferences. Experimental methods explain consumer’s preferences through the process of identifying the range of significant factors, generating hypothetical profiles, collecting consumer’s choices, and analyzing choice data.
The datasets of experimental methods are collected from two main survey methods: revealed preference and stated preference methods. Two main survey methods provide a wide application in understanding consumer’s preferences. For example, Durevall (2007) investigated that decreasing price of coffee has less impact on coffee demand in the long term due to the combination of consumer’s preferences and population structure in Sweden. In addition, Wolf et al.
(2011) suggested that the interaction of product attributes also have significant impact on consumer’s preferences, beside prices. Therefore, the aim of this study is to achieve three research objectives: (1) Identifying the key determinants of consumer’s choices for 3in1 coffee, (2) Determining relationship between price and consumer’s utility for 3in1 coffee, (3) Evaluating the impact of discount, promotion, and price changes on consumer’s choices. First, beside price, several factors are claimed to be reliably important and influence the consumer’s choices. Thus, identifying these factors provides deeply understanding about consumer’s preference in order to suggest both implication for instant coffee market and development strategy for manufacturers.
Second, it is said that determining the relationship between price and consumer’s utility plays an important role in finding out the effect of price change on consumer’s utility or choice probability of products for each manufacturer. This finding gives manufacturers an evaluation about their advantages or disadvantages to get higher profits in the 3in1 coffee market compared to the competitors. Finally, this study also Page 2 considers the impact of discount, promotion, and price change on consumer’s choices. Since 3in1 coffee market is oligopoly in Vietnam, any change of coffee attributes of one brand will have significant impact on its quantity sold.
Therefore, manufacturers could optimize their marketing activities for capturing more market shares. Scope of study This study is a practical research which relies on the basis of random utility theory. The data collection of this study is conducted in super-markets in Ho Chi Minh City in 2016 by applying revealed preference method with the addition of several hypothetical choice scenarios. Due to the limitation of finance and time span, a small sample of 197 respondents who are 3in1 coffee consumers is collected.
Each respondent is assumed to face all 19 surveyed alternatives in actual choice scenario, so the dataset of this study is treated as panel dataset. The contribution of this study is to investigate the association between consumer’s choices and coffee attributes such as price, main ingredients of coffee, packaging, and manufacturers by using the revealed preference method. From that, producers could understand more about the significance of several attributes, which may have heavy contribution to consumer’s choices. Moreover, the relationship between prices and consumer’s utility could help producers to evaluate the trust of consumers to their brands when market changes in term of prices, promotions, and discounts.
Thesis structure The remaining of this study includes four chapters. Chapter 2 presents literature review, which comprises theoretical review and empirical review. Chapter 3 presents research methodology, which describes the questionnaire design, survey process, and empirical model. Chapter 4 presents the data description, regression result, and discussion.
Chapter 5 summarizes the conclusion, the implication, the limitation, and the further research direction of this study. Page 3 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW In this chapter, the theoretical and empirical review have been summarized in order to provide the research framework for this study. In particular, this chapter concentrates on: (1) the literature of random utility theory in term of a brief history, basic assumptions, random utility model and its estimation; (2) several random utility model forms and their application; (3) empirical result of random utility model for food and beverage; (4) relationship between coffee’s attribute and consumer’s choice; (5) relationship between individual characteristics and consumer’s preferences. Random utility theory Probabilistic choice theories were the important parts in psychology.
They were developed to explain the inconsistency and non-transition of individuals’ preferences in experimental observations (Luce & Suppes, 1965).