Abstract

Purpose - In Chinese rose market, Korea competes against Latin American and African countries, but is not so competitive in terms of price and quality, implying the importance of using appropriate marketing strategies. This study aims to examine Chinese rose consumers' recognition and attributes of preference for roses produced in Korea, in order to use the result as baseline data for Korean rose exporters to China and provide implications that help establish a variety of marketing strategies targeting each region, income and age group. Research Design, Data and Methodology - 112 Chinese people were involved and interviewed in Chinese horticulture industry who had participated in 2016 Hortiflorexpo IPM Beijing. Online questionnaire survey was additionally conducted with 533 Chinese living in Korea and China. The Conjoint Analysis was conducted for region, age, and income group of respondents to estimate the relative importance of rose attributes evaluated by each population group and the utility derived from each attribute level. This process aimed to compare respective population groups for the relative importance and utility to derive implications for targeted marketing strategies. Results - The analysis finds that Chinese rose consumers prioritize rose color, followed by price, flowering stage, and flower size in purchasing roses. They prefer red roses most, followed by pink and then yellow. Moreover, they prefer larger roses, and relatively cheaper roses. The analysis reveals they prefer roses in their 20%-flowering stage to more than 40%-flowering stage. Conclusions - Establishing marketing strategies differentiated for each Chinese consumer group is critical in expanding Korean rose export. The analysis finds while Chinese consumers living in Beijing considered rose color and flowering stage more importantly than their counterparts in Shanghai, Chinese consumers living in Shanghai considered rose price and size more importantly than their counterparts living in Beijing. Therefore, establishing marketing strategies based on these attributes of preference in each region is necessary. Mid & low-income consumer groups considered price as the most important factor, and high-income consumer groups considered rose color as the most important one. It is, thus, important to focus on rose color when establishing a marketing strategy with targeting the high-income consumer group.