Impact of Consumer’s Education Level and Agricultural-Product Brand Leadership on Student’s Decision Making

Abstract

Consumer education level plays a significant role in the formation of brand image and its evaluation degree, which directly affects a brand's development. Decision-making also plays a significant role in the life of students to deal with uncertainty and complexity while choosing among competing brands. It is critical to identify those potential factors which affect students’ decision-making process for selecting agricultural product brands, based on consumers' education level. This novel study aims to evaluate the influence that a consumer’s education level and perceived agricultural-product brand leadership has on students' decision-making. In addition, the moderating role of agricultural product brand loyalty and the mediating role of agriculture marketing were investigated within the framework of the suggested model. A questionnaire in the form of a self-administered survey was given out to a total of 367 Chinese students in the department of agriculture who had recently made a purchase of agricultural products. In this particular investigation, a partial least squares structural equation modeling analysis was carried out with the assistance of the SmartPLS v3.0 software. The findings demonstrated that consumers' education level and perceived brand leadership play a favorable role in the student’s decision-making. Additionally, agricultural marketing also has beneficial effects on the student’s decision-making process. In addition, agricultural marketing partially mediates the relationship between perceived agricultural-product brand leadership and students’ decision-making, whereas agricultural brand loyalty positively moderates this relationship. By specifically focusing on the decision-making process of students, this study makes an effort to apply the idea of brand leadership to the context of an educational setting. In addition, mediating and moderating variables shed light on particular consumption patterns and preferences of students.