Analysis of the factors affecting consumer’s some traditional food products preferences by multidimensional scaling method

Traditional products are indispensable for consumers in Turkey. This study includes products especially yogurt, noodles and grape molasses which play an important role in consumer preferences. There are several factors which have influence on purchase decisions for three products. The aim of this study is to determine the consumer behaviour and classifying consumer attitudes by determining effective factors. Multidimensional scaling (MDS) analysis which is a common technique in marketing is used in this study. The usage of MDS in data analyses have several advantages. Namely, MDS is an extremely flexible technique, one that can model non-linear relationships and is not bound by the numerous assumptions associated with general linear models or even with factor analyses. MDS also known as perceptual mapping is a procedure that allows a researcher to determine the perceived relative image of a set of objects (firms, products, ideas, or other items associated with commonly held perceptions). The purpose of MDS is to transform consumer judgments of overall similarity or preference (eg, preference for stores or brands) into distances represented in multidimensional space. The underlying dimensions come from respondents’ judgments about pairs of products. Because of these advantages, MDS is the most common technique used in perceptual mapping. To perform a MDS analysis of data within SPSS there are a two main options; the ALSCAL and the PROXSCAL procedure. As Leydesdorff