Study of behavior, priorities and barriers of shrimp consumers in Iran

Planning to increase the per capita consumption of shrimp in the country, like any other food, will not be possible without an examination of consumer's behavior and the recognition of their needs, interest and tastes. The purpose of this study was also, to assess the priorities of shrimp consumers and their barriers to consumption in the country. The statistical population of the study was the whole country that was selected by random sampling of 10 cities and completed 1000 questionnaires corresponding to the population of the mentioned cities. Questionnaire data were transferred to the SPSS 20 software and ranking of desired factors were determined by Friedman test. The results showed that the three first priorities of consumers were quality, packaging and experimental records. Other priorities were positive and negative beliefs, supplying and processing model, price, availability, convenience of cooking, consumer income, and time-consuming, respectively. In term of the quality, packaging, positive and negative beliefs and processing model, the first priority of consumption society was smell, brands name, tissue contamination and fried shrimp (packaging), respectively. The study of barriers to consumption of this product in the country showed that the prices (expensive) of shrimp, its smell, and disproportion of shrimp prices with people's incomes were the first three barriers to buying and consuming shrimp in Iran, respectively. In this research, per capita consumption was calculated 98.5 and 487 grams for the statistical population and consumption society respectively. According to the results, in order to increase the per capita consumption, this industry's managers should concentrate their activities on quality and packaging indicators and final price of product.