Analysis of factors affecting vegetable oil consumption preferences: Case of Süleymanpaşa, Tekirdağ

In recent years, with increasing awareness of food safety, changes in consumption of herbal essences oils are also observed. Especially, consumers depending on their income level, they started to prefer oils that they believe to be healthy and reliable. In order to meet te demand arising with the rapidly increasing population and changing behaviour patterns there has been an increase both in the world and in our country in the cultivation areas of vegetable oil plants. The highest production and consumption in Turkey; sunflower, olive, such as rapeseed and vegetable oil occurs in plants and products. A questionnaire was performed with 167 consumers living in Süleymanpaşa district of Tekirdağ Province and factors determining vegetable oil consumption preferences were analyzed. In the survey questions were asked about brand preferences, packaing, choices, usage areas of oils, types and quantities of oil consumed, how often they consume, features that they pay attent,on to when purchasing and socio-economic conditions. Comsumption and usage disposition were determined with these questions and analyzed in computer environment.According to the analysis result; 52% of the consumers graduated from high school and university. Consumers; 45% are public employees, 12% are private sector employees, 11% are retired and 10% self-employed.62.3% comsumers are woman and 40% are men.75.4% of the respondents are married consumers and 23.4% are single consumers. The level of income 26% of consumers between 2.001-3.500 TL. 33.5% of the consumers avarage monthly food amount is between 250-500 TL.Consumers' monthly consumption of sunflower oil per person is 1,079 kg, olive oil follows sunflower oil with a consumption amount of 0,606 kg.75% and 44% of consumers prefer to consume sunflower and olive everyday. Other important criteria are when purchasing the product the confidence in food and faith in keep healthy. The fact that the margarine iş the least preferred oil in daily use can be considered as the biggest indicator in this matter. With the increasing awareness from year to year 38% of consumers who search for natural food stated that they consumer butter everyday. According to result of the factor analysis conducted for the grouping of the criteria taken into consideration when purchasing vegatable oil in the research 10 diffierent components were collected under 2 factors, internal and external quality. Considering the consumers' evaluation of the fact that vegatable oils are healthy, food safety, flavor and taste, trust in the brand, product quality certificate, type (infiltration, riviera) to external quality factor; advertisements in the media, the packaging and evaluations on which it was presented were loaded to the external quality factor. The evaluations in the internal quality factor take the belief that the most important of the purchasing preferences of the consumer is the health of vegatable oil. When we look at the evaluation of the external quality factor among the consumer buying trends, it is ocur that the advertisements in the media are more important than the product's packaging and appearance.