Buying Intention and Consumption of Chicken Meat: The Case of Consumers in Iloilo City, Central Philippines

Despite studies showing that chicken meat has more health benefits compared to pork, the literature reveals that pork consumption is much higher than chicken meat. This study was conducted to identify factors affecting households’ buying intention and consumption of chicken meat using Icek Azjen’s theory of planned behavior (TPB). The actual consumption was the main dependent variable while buying intention, attitude, subjective norms (SN), and perceived behavioral control (PBC) were the independent variables. Primary data was collected by interviewing 270 randomly selected household heads using a structured questionnaire in seven districts of Iloilo City, Central Philippines. Descriptive statistics was used to describe respondents’ consumption of fresh chicken meat while Kruskal-Wallis, Mann-Whitney, ANOVA, and t-test were used to determine differences in attitude, SN, and PBC across demographic variables. Linear and multiple regression analyses were used to predict the effect of independent variables to buying intention and actual behavior. Significant findings include the following: buying intention was a reliable predictor for actual consumption of chicken meat; only attitude and PBC significantly influenced buying intention; there were no significant differences in attitude across age, sex, educational attainment, employment status, family size, religion, and household income; PBC significantly differed across age groups; key product attributes that respondents considered important were smell, color, price, government certification, and convenience of preparation; and the top 3 control factors that affect perceived behavioral control were accessibility, ease of cooking, and flexibility in preparation of variety of dishes. The results would be useful to marketers in devising marketing strategies designed to increase consumption of chicken meat