Modelling for the input criteria of adolescents’ purchasing decision process

Choice is a new concept in today's world. Most people in developed countries make more choices, both on a daily basis and in relation to their way of life, than they did a hundred years ago. A comparison of the twentieth century with the nineteenth century shows a kind of prosperity achieved through the growing systems of production and distribution, which some interpret as freedom of choice. What is clear about choice is thinking about the criteria for choosing or not choosing, and not only about the concept of how people live but also about the way they think and their identity. Choosing the right food is the first step to having a healthy society. The science of marketing seeks to influence consumer behavior. Consumers’ behavior is strongly influenced by their cultural, social, personal and psychological characteristics. Of course, marketing of the food industry is not possible without considering the criteria for choosing food in the purchasing decision. The food selection criteria in purchasing decisions have been more or less extracted in previous studies, but the relationships between such elements are complex. This complexity varies among consumers with different demographic characteristics. Among consumers in the adolescent age group, however, these differences will face other aspects of purchasing decision criteria. In addition to marketing activities, food industry marketers are concerned about adolescent food health, so are parents and organizations that support healthy nutrition. Therefore, identifying the relationships among the determinants of food choice in adolescents is an important issue that requires proper research. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to find a model to present the relationships between the extracted elements in relation to the criteria for purchasing decision-making in adolescents. Understanding the relationships among these criteria will certainly help marketers, parents, and teen nutrition organizations. Developing a model to determine the input criteria of the purchasing decision-making process in adolescents meets the purpose of the study. The present study is fundamental in terms of orientation and interpretive in terms of research philosophy. Its main strategy is methodological pluralism using two strategies simultaneously. It is based on a qualitative approach and is conducted through combining the two methods of thematic analysis (thematic) and modeling. In the qualitative part, the criteria were extracted by a content analysis, and 20 themes and hidden concepts were extracted from 22 Yazd adolescents in the age group of 10 to 14 years old. The analyses were performed with the 10Nvivo software through structured in-depth interviews. A science was included in the study and 4 components were studied as researcher-made components. In the quantitative part, the opinions of 12 experts, including 6 university professors and 6 managers of restaurants in Yazd were collected regarding the variables. The data were presented by interpretive structural modeling in the form of an applied and abstract model with Excel and Micmac software programs. In this study, 107 primary codes were selected as the sample. Through repeated revisions and the integration of codes based on similarity and relevance through various stages, 14 main themes and 107 sub-themes were extracted for the concept of food choice decision by Iranian adolescents. What follows in the form of 14 categories is the result of a process that began with initial observations and considerations and the identification of indicators. Then, the obtained indicators were categorized and summarized in the form of concepts. Finally, by the integration of the concepts in a more general form, the 14 categories were studied (including, sensory attractions, lifestyle, tendency to modernity in adolescents, religious beliefs, hope for the future, hope for the future, communication, health orientation, familiarity, age of puberty, customer loyalty, ethical concerns, marketing mix and hedonic effects). The results showed that, in addition to the identified components, other components were also effective in the statistical population of adolescents. Also, by interpretive structural modeling, a model consisting of these components was presented to expresses the relationships among them. Knowledge of consumer behavior is considered as an important competitive advantage which leads to a significant reduction in wrong decisions. Consumer behavior in marketing may be less considered. Through consumer behavior marketing, instead of focusing on finding the right customers for the products, one can focus on finding the right products for the customers and coordinate all the corresponding activities that affect the customers and increase profits by creating more satisfied customers. In this study, in addition to the components adapted from previous studies, variables such as puberty, eugenicism, nostalgia and hope for the future have been added to the model, and the relationships among these variables and other components are determined.