Consumer Preference for Dairy Products in China

Dairy consumption has increased among the Chinese population in recent years, with consumer demand shifting from a focus on safety to an emphasis on high quality produce. Meanwhile, despite continuous economic growth and improvement of living standards, malnutrition concerns still exist within China. These problems to a large extent reflect the imbalance and inefficiency in food and nutrition choice rather than the constraints of financial capability. Consumer choices and consumption of dairy products are known to be influenced by various factors, including product-related aspects such as price, taste, brand, country of origin, packaging, nutrient content, and health labelling, as well as consumer demographics and behaviours. This thesis focuses on the effect of product-related factors of front-of-pack (FOP) nutrition claims and grass-fed labels on consumer preference and milk consumption. We also investigate the relationship between consumer-related factors (e.g. familiarity, food neophobia) and cheese acceptance in Chinese dairy consumers. Using an online survey conducted in September 2022, 3058 Chinese participants who consumed dairy were recruited through the Qualtrics platform. Participants were asked to complete several sections of questions, including socio-demographic information, lifestyle, consumer preferences for nutrition claims in milk, consumer preferences for grass-fed milk, acceptance of cheese dishes, and a food frequency questionnaire (FFQ). To evaluate consumer preferences for nutrients in milk, a discrete choice experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of nutrition content claims (“source of”, “high in”)—such as source of protein, calcium, omega-3, or high in vitamin D—on consumers' preference and willingness to pay. The results suggested that Chinese consumer place significant emphasis on calcium, the nutrition content claims of which led to greater acceptance and willingness to pay for the dairy product that contains such claims, followed by omega-3, protein, and vitamin D. The claim “high in” was viewed as more attractive than “source of” for every nutrient considered and led to higher consumer premium. Alongside the nutritional profile of the final products, naturalness-related attributes are also key factors influencing consumers' perception of milk quality. Within our survey, we examined grazing conditions (e.g., pasture grazing), animal feed (fed grass vs. not fed grass), functional improvement, and imagery property (healthy, natural, tasty, and sustainable) on consumers’ willingness to pay. Interestingly, consumers reported higher premiums for grazing conditions and animal feed compared to functional improvements and imagery attributes. These findings suggest that emphasizing natural grazing practices could be a more effective strategy to establish product differentiation for capturing consumer premiums in the grass-fed dairy market, especially for export orientated countries (such as Ireland) with dominant grass-fed production in dairy and higher natural grazing standard. Despite increased milk consumption, other dairy products, such as cheese, remain under consumed in China. This study found that higher consumer familiarity with cheese dishes is associated with a higher willingness to eat, with preferences varying based on demographic factors and food neophobia. Familiar consumers preferred food items such as cheesecake, while unfamiliar consumers favoured cheese bars. Familiarity played a more significant role for older consumers and those with high food neophobia. Mediation analysis showed that familiarity positively affected preferences through perceived taste and health but was not influenced by perceived affordability. These findings emphasize the importance of perceived taste in understanding how familiarity shapes consumer preferences for cheese dishes.