What affects your shopping? : The impacts of values on Swedish tomato consumption

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine what values influence Swedish consumers when purchasing tomatoes. Previous research show that there are many factors and attributes that consumers choose from. These aspects included health, low price, labelling of products, knowledge of what labels stand for, trust in the information of the packaging and appearance of the product. The values that were investigated in this study were conceptualized by Geert Hofstede and Fons Trompenaars. They both have similar theories of national cultures, which they explained by making cultural dimension scales. These were based on values that can be identified in cultures. The cultural dimensions were individualism versus collectivism, masculinity versus femininity, high or low uncertainty avoidance, long or short-term orientation, how humans relate to the environment and individualism versus communitarianism. To investigate this, the following research questions were asked; (1) what factors/attributes are important to Swedish consumers when purchasing tomatoes, (2) what values are prominent in Swedish consumers and (3) what the relations between factors/attributes and values regarding Swedish tomato consumption are. In order to answer this, a survey was answered by 310 respondents. To understand why consumers value different factors/attributes, and possibly change consumption patterns, it is important to know what influences consumers. The results showed that the factors/attributes investigated proved to be more or less equally important no matter what pole of the different dimensions the respondents belonged to. Finally, some parts of the results did not correspond with previous research, the main difference was that low price was not considered as important as previous research showed.