Consumer purchase behaviour towards imported premium fruits in China: A systematic review and conceptual framework

: Background Consumer purchase behaviour towards imported premium fruits is a complex and underexplored research domain, characterised by high price premiums, symbolic consumption and heightened concerns over food safety and product authenticity. Despite rapid market growth across Asia and beyond, this product category remains theoretically underdeveloped. Scope and approach This paper presents a systematic review of 56 peer-reviewed articles retrieved from Web of Science and Scopus following PRISMA guidelines, with China as the focal market. The Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) and the Theory of Consumption Values (TCV) are integrated to develop a context-sensitive conceptual framework for imported premium fruit markets. Key findings and conclusions The review identifies five antecedents of purchase behaviour, namely product attributes, perceived value, consumer trust, cultural factors and market conditions. The framework specifies the differential pathways through which these antecedents operate on the TPB mediators of attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control to shape purchase intention and behaviour and formalises these relationships as eleven testable propositions. Consumer trust emerges as a particularly fragile construct, given the prevalence of counterfeit labelling and inconsistent certification, and emerging traceability and authentication technologies are identified as potential remedies. Demographic characteristics are proposed as moderators warranting empirical investigation. Although developed in the Chinese context, the framework is expected to be transferable to comparable premium food import markets with appropriate cultural adaptation. This review contributes a conceptual, testable framework rather than empirical findings, synthesising fragmented evidence into an integrated TPB-TCV structure and providing a structured agenda for future research.