What Makes Consumers Purchase Fresh Eggs in Supermarkets: The Effect of Unrealistic Choice Set Matters

SIMPLE SUMMARY: Fresh egg is a very fundamental food ingredient to consumers’ daily life, while consumers in Taiwan have faced barriers to effective decision-making for eggs they needed, including the increasing consumer concerns about food safety, traceability, and the increasing demand for animal welfare production. Consequently, Taiwanese supermarkets are eager to identify what types of fresh egg attributes would fit to their customers. Further, the effect of unrealistic options in the choice experiment design has a limited understanding. This study aims to investigate what factors affect customers’ decision-making to purchase fresh eggs in Taiwan. The findings of this research suggest that the effect of unrealistic options in the choice experiment design may mislead the results. Thus, the confirmed results showed that Taiwanese consumers are willing to pay a premium for attributes for animal welfare, traceability, farm brand, and brown color egg. Especially, the attribute of animal welfare reveals a significant effect on consumers’ decision-making. This provides an important hint to government policymakers and egg industry in Taiwan to better understand issues encompassing the diversity of attributes associated with fresh egg products offered in supermarkets. ABSTRACT: Eggs are the crucial component of daily meals for almost everyone in Taiwan, while the multi-attributes of fresh egg products generate the challenges of marketing and promotions in supermarkets. This study analyzes the market segmentation and consumer willingness-to-pay (WTP) for fresh egg attributes (i.e., color, traceability, animal welfare, brand, and price). In particular, the effect of the unrealistic choice set is considered in this study. The data collection was distributed near markets, schools, and train stations across Taiwan from July to September in 2020. A total of 1115 valid responses were collected, and the Latent Class Model was used. Results show that fresh egg products in supermarkets reveal a strong preference for animal welfare label with the highest WTP, which is about 64.2 NT$ (≈US$ 2.29). Furthermore, traceability label, farm brand, and brown-color egg still exhibit positive WTP of about 33.4 NT$ (≈US$ 1.19), 32.6 NT$ (≈US$ 1.16), and 32.5 NT$ (≈US$ 1.16) in supermarkets, respectively. However, including the unrealistic choice set can potentially alter the final outcomes, and it provides a good example for researchers who may have the same situation. This research helps to know more about the complexity of attributes for fresh egg products in supermarkets, so marketers would be able to adopt the effective marketing strategies for fresh egg products in supermarkets.