Dinâmica comportamental dos consumidores de café: um fator gerador de ações mercadológicas

Aiming to identify how marketing tools influence the coffee consumer’s purchasing behavior, a piece of marketing research with exploratory and descriptive analyses, of qualitative nature was accomplished. The survey was used, with structured questionnaires applied to 800 consumers (São Paulo, Belo Horizonte and Rio de Janeiro) in hypermarkets from July to December 2001. The questionnaires were tabulated and analyzed by utilizing the SSPS software (v.10) with descriptive and multivariate statistic analyses. The sample consisted mostly of consumers of the female gender, married, aged between 20 and 40 years, belonging, in general, to the social class B, senior high school educated. Among the marketing tools, it was found that the features related to the produce (flavor, smell and quality) have greater perception and influence on the consumer’s behavior. Price also plays an important role, as part of the sample belongs to social class C. It was verified that the consumer would not regard as relevant tools such as advertisement and package, proving themselves faithful to the brand. The consumer proved indifferent to the appeals and advertising announcements which, in general, are not very attractive.