The Thai Royal Project Foundation Retail Stores： How and why the consumers buy？

The Royal Project, established in 1969, has responded to His Majesty＇s initiative to help the hill tribes in growing useful crops which enable them to have a better standard of living. In 1992, the Royal Project was transformed into Royal Project Foundation in order to become the public organization that can be operated efficiently as a private company. After that, the Royal Project Foundation Retail Stores or ＂Doi Kham＂ were set up to help distribute products and produces from the project and its members. However, the Royal Project Foundation Retail Stores are currently lacking of adequate marketing information to help management make the right and more aggressive decision. Therefore, this research was conducted in order to explore the consumers＇ behaviors and their reasons towards the purchase from ＂Doi Kham＂. Furthermore, consumer clustering and characteristics of each group are discovered. A survey of 341 current customers from 2 most crowded branches--Don Muang International Airport and Farmer Market in Bangkok--was done using self-administered questionnaire. The data obtained was then analyzed by using factor analysis, chi-square test, ANOVA and cluster analysis. The results show that majority of customers are women aged between 24-50 and having income more than 20,000 baht （around $606） a month. Most of them bought the Royal Project Foundation products from ＂Doi Kham＂ directly instead of the private-owned stores. More than one third of samples shop more than twice a month and spend moderately around 100 to 499 baht. The most popular products are temperate-climate vegetables, followed by agricultural processed food and temperate-climate fruits consecutively. Main reasons that the consumers buy the products are the product quality, standard labeling, helping welfare of farmers and hill tribesmen and brand credibility respectively. For marketing factors, the most important factor influencing the purchase is product quality and safety, followed by convenience of shopping, pricing, store service, store layout/displays and promotion consecutively. Three groups of clusters are obtained--＂traditional buyers＂, ＂service-oriented buyers＂ and ＂price-concerned buyers＂.