Patterns of fruit and vegetable buying behaviour in the United States and India

This paper describes the patterns discovered in fruit and vegetable buying behaviour in the United States and India. Using claimed buying data obtained from online questionnaires, it compares the patterns against those found extensively in consumer goods categories across the world. This study analyses consumer loyalty with Double Jeopardy, consumer sharing with Duplication of Purchase and brand user profiles with Mean Absolute Deviations. The results show the buying behaviour patterns of Double Jeopardy, Duplication of Purchase and that brand user profiles exist within the fruit and vegetable categories. The implications of these findings are: (1) that the size of fruit and vegetable brands are largely determined by how many people buy them and not how loyal those consumers are; (2) fruit and vegetable brands share consumers with one another; and (3) fruit and vegetable brands are not purchased by unique segments of the population. Therefore, in order to increase the number of people buying fruit and vegetable brands, marketers should focus on increasing their mental and physical availability (i.e. the same strategies used for consumer goods brands). Refereed/Peer-reviewed