The Analysis of the Consumers’ Behavior and Willingness to Pay for Liquid Nutritional Supplement in Taiwan’s Municipalities

With the rapid development of economy, the pace of life and the proportion of eating out have been increased, causing people’s nutritional intake tend to be unbalanced nowadays. Thus they are trying to replenish the nutrition by taking dietary supplement products. Since dietary supplement products in drinks pattern are convenience to eat, it have gradually received extensive attention. Therefore, this study will analyze purchase behavior and user experience of liquid nutritional supplements of consumers who live in Taiwan’s municipalities, and then analyzes the characteristics of different groups of consumers. Moreover, this study will estimates consumers’ utility functions of the liquid nutritional supplements for understanding consumers’ choice behavior and willingness to pay. Empirical results show that the majority of respondents who have experience of buying liquid nutritional supplements are the respondents who are female, younger, well-educated and usually with exercise habits. Younger respondents have a higher propensity to increase their willingness to pay due to advertising and healthy food certification. Furthermore, they will pay attention on whether the products have healthy food certification on nutritional supplements and it is one of the considerations for increasing their willing to pay. Additionally, purchase convenience is also an important factor to them. For the consumer preferences, the analysis found that the most preferred attribute of consumers is improving gastrointestinal function. It follows by having healthy food certification mark, selling in drug stores and convenience stores, and ad-free. We suggest that the manufacturers of liquid nutritional supplements target on consumers who are female, younger, ages ranging from 20-40 years old, and who have higher exercise frequency. The product marketing should appeal to healthy claims and health food certificate, which is most valued by consumers. Manufacturers should not exaggerate product efficacy and should actively involve in the certification of healthy food certification. At the same time, to ensure consumers’ food safety, the government should establish a regular food certification process through an impartial third party and check the efficacy advertising of manufacturers.