Analysis of Salad Purchaser Types and Purchasing Behaviors through Social Network Analysis

Purpose: The size of the salad consumption market has expanded since Covid‐19, and continuous growth is predicted. Therefore, by extracting influential core purchasers in the salad consumption market and analyzing their purchasing behaviors and consumer types, this study intended to provide basic data for establishing a marketing strategy.Methods: The analysis data is the purchasing data of 576 people who have purchased salads between 2016 and 2020 (panel data of the Rural Development Administration), and in the social network analysis, the centrality structure was analyzed.Results: First, in the results of analyzing the causes of the rapid increase in salad consumption in 2020, it was found that the increase in consumption of new purchasers (n=102) had little effect. The existing consumer type (n = 474), which has been the majority of the salad consumption market so far, were consumers with stable income. However, the results of study indicated that the type of consumers has expanded since low-income class as well as high-income class increased consumption of purchasing salad. Second, in the results of analyzing the types of key purchasers with great influence in the salad consumption market, there was a difference from the results of frequency analysis in age, number of family members, existence/absence of children, and income decile. This suggests that there should be a difference between the type of customers according to the apparent quantitative figure and the actual influential purchasers. Third, in the results of analyzing the salad purchasing behaviors of core purchasers, the purchasing site for existing purchasers was large‐scale marts and for new purchasers it was corporate‐type supermarkets. Purchases were concentrated on Saturdays for both existing and new purchasers. As for the purchased products, existing purchasers had a high preference for products made of chicken, and new purchasers had a high preference for vegetable/fruit salad. In particular, in the results of purchased products by age group, in the case of 50s and 60s, it was an interesting result that there was a difference between the products purchased by the existing and new purchasers even though they were the same age.Conclusion: When establishing a marketing strategy in the salad consumption market, it is necessary to pay attention to the purchasing behavior of key buyers.