Milk is a common source of nutrition, and is widely consumed across the globe by people of all ages. Processing of milk has now become an integral part of dairy business. This is usually done inorder to stabilize and standardize the milk before it is offered for sale to the customers. Pasteurisation and homogenisation are the primary processing steps carried out in most dairy industries. Pasteurization involves heating the fresh milk to a certain temperature in order to kill harmful bacteria and homogenization is for breaking down fat globules into smaller components. Processing of milk has certain disadvantages as it involves some loss of nutritional value. The number of users of processed milk is rapidly growing in India, led primarily by increasing urbanization. However, there are a few suppliers of fresh milk in urban and semi-urban regions in India, and a need was felt to promote the consumption of fresh milk. Accordingly, this research was initiated keeping in mind the importance of consuming fresh milk (unprocessed). Through an extensive literature survey, we compiled the factors that have been identified elsewhere in the globe, to have an impact on the intention to buy fresh milk. These factors are satisfaction, price sensitivity, household characteristics and time frame of delivery. We attempt to provide an insight into the relative effectiveness of these factors in the Indian context. A questionnaire was used to collect responses from individuals representing households who currently consume processed milk. Responses from a sample of 87 households have been taken into consideration. The questionnaire aims at finding out influence of factors on their intention to buy fresh milk. The factors such assatisfaction, time frame of delivery, price sensitivity, income levels, strength of family and average consumption have been found from the literature review. Significant literature has not yet been obtained in the Indian context. It may be noted that all respondents were from the group that did not buy fresh milk at the time of the survey. SPSS has been used for the purpose of analysis of data collected. We tested the combined impact of all the factors on the intention to buy, and we also tested individually, the relationship between each factor with the final outcome – an intention to buy fresh milk. Price sensitivity and time frame of delivery were found to be the two most significant factors influencing the intention to buy fresh milk.
Volume 11 | 02-Special Issue
Pages: 2094-2102