An investigation about the impacts of familiarity on repurchase intentions among consumers in Ho Chi Minh City toward frozen pangasius products.

Abstract

In the trend of modernization and industrialization, many people in big cities like

Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) are busier and busier to earn for their living. They do not care much about the importance of a nutritious meal and usually need something fast and convenient for their mealtimes. Therefore, frozen foods become one of their favorites and frozen pangasius products are one of them. With the population of nearly 8 million people in HCMC and nearly 90 million people in the whole country (GSO statistics, 2012), domestic market seems to be very potential for these products. However, while Vietnam is famous for exporting pangasius products all over the world, many Vietnamese still do not know what pangasius is, where is it sold, or how to cook it right. Therefore the purpose of this research is to understand about the familiarity of consumers towards frozen pangasius, especially in HCMC, and then understand what factors would have influences on it, then how the familiarity influences their behavioral intention. Based on 4-factors model which is adapted from previous studies together with data collected from 300 respondents in HCMC, the research found that most consumers in HCMC have known about these products. Because there are a lot of negative news about food industry recently, consumers now pay more attention to product knowledge, they would only buy what they understand. The product familiarity does have impacts on consumers behavioral intentions. Many of them have willing to do purchase or introduce to others once they getting familiar with the products. Beside the knowledge, consumers

are also easily affected by social-environment factors around them, they also have positive feelings with the products once they are involved with them. Therefore, companies should put more effort in creating the social trends to make consumers follow as well as having more promotion campaigns to get more consumers involved.

Although there are still some limitations in this research, food processing firms, especially Vietnamese aquaculture foods companies, can know more about opinions and needs of consumers to build an appropriate strategy to capture the largest market shares in domestic market which is a very potential one.