Study of consumer preferences for domestic vs imported food products

Romania is among the top twenty countries worldwide in terms of production of meat, livestock and prices of fruits and vegetables. Due to the dynamics of consumer preferences for food products, lately, many foreign producers have entered the domestic market, generating a quick diversification of food products range. Consumer purchasing decisions are influenced significantly by the intrinsic quality of the products, information on the label, appearance, price and packaging. In terms of the increasingly diversified food products, the present study seeks to highlight the consumer preferences for domestic and imported food products. The paper is structured in three parts. The first part, through documentary synthesis and analysis of statistical data (Voineagu V., 2007), make a market analysis of the main categories of food. In this part are analyzed the production, the consumption and the volume of imports and exports. The second part of the study is a marketing research (Manole V and Stoian M, 2004), which examines the consumer preferences for different categories of domestic and imported food products through a questionnaire survey administered to a representative sample of 200 people. The last part of the study shows the conclusions of the analysis carried out and a set of pragmatic proposals for matching the supply of food products to the needs and preferences of consumers