Abstract

The consumption trends of Kahramanmaras type ice cream of Turkish consumers have been considerably increasing for the last decade due to improvements related to the consumers’ purchase powers, a rapid progress in ice cream technology, and dietary and health concerns. The aim of the study is to determine the main factors affecting the consumers’ perception and preferences of Kahramanmaras type ice cream, and to analyze their purchase attitude and behaviours towards it. The results of the study showed that the nutritional quality and information, brand prestige, sensorial quality attributes, trust to manufacturer, ice cream mixture attributes, local brand satisfaction and social statute had the major effects on the preference and acceptance of the product. And also the share of the ice cream expenditure within total food, monthly income, age, education, family size, occupation of the consumers played the important roles on the amounts of their consumption, respectively. These findings could provide some important information to its manufacturers, retailers and marketers, and this information could be used to develop the deterministic marketing tactics and strategies, and to design a new ice cream based on the marketing mix for the target consumer segments.

Key words: Factor analysis, Kahramanmaras type, ice cream attributes, MRCanalysis, Turkish consumer’s attitudes.