Registration of imported pet food and purchase incentives

A review of pet food research

Compared with China, the research on pet food-related issues in foreign countries is earlier. In a study of consumer preferences and purchasing behaviors for pet food, David Gomez Baquero et al. (2018) explored the response of dog owners to the appearance of pet food and found that the acceptability of the appearance of dry dog food was affected by the number, color, shape and size of different particles in the product. Single roughage samples of medium size, conventional shape and brown were rated highest by consumers, with participants disliking extra-small or oversized grains, high-dimensional contrast shapes, and light brown grains.

Benson Vladlena et al. (2019) compared consumer acceptance of different dry dog food products, pet owners evaluated 8 dry dog food samples on the US market, and consumers rated how much they liked the overall preference, aroma, and appearance of the products. The results showed that the appearance of the sample, especially the color, influenced the overall preference of the pet owner more than the aroma of the product; The overall preference cluster was not related to income, age, gender, or education, suggesting that general consumer demographics do not appear to play a major role in individual consumer acceptance of dog food products.

Kwak MinKyu and Cha Seong so (2021) conducted a study on the pet food purchasing behavior of Korean consumers, and the results showed that packaging design, price fairness, brand reputation, and perception of product health all have a positive impact on consumer recommendations and consumer attitudes. Huo Jinhuan (2019) took China's pet food market as the research background and the marketing of RX Pet Food Co., Ltd. as the research content, and proposed four pet food marketing strategies: rapid upgrading of product series, scientific adjustment of sales prices, multi-dimensional development of sales channels, and comprehensive optimization of promotion strategies. Han Liping (2021) put forward suggestions that mainland pet food companies should cultivate brand awareness and implement a multi-brand strategy by combing the industrial development of foreign pet food giants, and believed that R&D and innovation should be improved and product quality should be emphasized.

02

A review of research on purchase triggers

2.1 Definition of Purchase Inducement

The development of motivation theory has paid attention to the complexity of human behavior in modern times, and motivation theory has emerged that focuses on internal needs and external incentives. Among them, the inducement theory assumes that extrinsic inducements will cause individuals to face specific stimuli and produce corresponding internal thinking activities, that is, cognitive responses, which can be divided into positive and negative. Conversely, negative cognitive responses are when individuals passively dismiss or disregard information that may lead to conflict or adverse experiences.

Zhang Aiqing (1996) believes that the process and mechanism of motivation are related to the internal motivation and external incentives of individuals under the effect of self-regulation, so as to form the motivation factors that stimulate behavior. The purchase incentives referred to in this article are extrinsic incentives that emphasize the effect of external stimuli.

2.2 Purchase Incentive Content Research

From the perspective of specific purchase incentive research content, different scholars consider different purchase incentives for different scenarios.

Kwak Min Kyu and Cha SeongSo0 (2021) conducted a study on the behavior of Korean consumers purchasing pet food, and the results showed that packaging design, price fairness, brand reputation, and perception of product health all have a positive impact on consumer recommendations and consumer attitudes. In addition, recommendations and attitudes increase purchase intent, but this relationship varies depending on whether online or offline purchase channels are used.

In the online channel group, packaging design, price fairness and product health have a greater impact on recommendations and attitudes. In offline channels, brand reputation has a higher impact on recommendations and perceptions. However, this study has certain limitations and does not distinguish between purchase channels. Because consumers have different pet food purchase channels such as department stores, discount stores, and specialty stores, the choice characteristics of consumers may be different.

Liang Hui and Yuan Gan (2016) divided purchase incentives into monetary purchase incentives (such as promotional means such as discounts) and charitable purchase incentives (such as donating a portion of sales to charity), and studied the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses of Chinese and Korean consumers to different promotional methods, and found that consumers were more enthusiastic about companies that provided charitable incentives than those that provided monetary purchase incentives.

From the perspective of the effect of external incentives, Gan Liyang et al. (2017) divided the incentive planning into product incentives including product price and packaging, personal incentives such as gender and age, and environmental training incentives such as word-of-mouth recommendation by relatives and friends, and believed that these three major incentives have positive and negative reinforcement effects. Yi Zhe and Shi Wenwen (2023) take the sports lottery industry as the research content and demonstrate that the direct effect of external incentives on consumers' repurchase intention is significant.

03

A review of research on consumer perception

Cognition belongs to the field of psychology, and in recent years, the research on consumer cognition has increased a lot, and cognitive theories and models have been widely used in the study of consumer purchasing behavior.

Michael R. Solomon (2009)'s ABC model points out that consumer attitudes are composed of cognition, emotion, and behavior, where cognition refers to the knowledge and beliefs that consumers have about objects after being influenced by external stimuli. Lin et al. (2008) divided the cognitive system of consumers' perceptions into three psychological ladders to study the cognitive mental model of consumer personalization. In the formative stage of cognition (sensation and perception), brand positioning should have good sensibility; In the stages of cognitive development (attention, memory, association, thinking and imagination), the psychological needs of consumers should be satisfied, but the coherence of cognitive development stages is caused by consumers' selective attention, so that the brand positioning should be enough to attract consumers' attention.

Benson Vladlena et al. (2019) proposed and empirically tested the purchase intention model on social platforms through a study of more than 500 active social media users, explored the influence of social media user traits and cognitive factors on purchase intention, and explored the moderating effects of age and gender. Studies have shown that age is a determinant of men's purchase intention, with beliefs having a significant impact on younger women and cognitive factors having a significant impact on older women. Xu Yansong (2022) conducted an empirical analysis of the influencing factors of consumers' purchase behavior of Rizhao tea, and the results showed that cognition has a positive impact on purchase behavior, among which emotional cognition has the greatest impact on purchase behavior.

04

A review of research on buying behavior

4.1 Factors influencing purchase behavior

By combing through the literature and the latest research results, this paper finds that there are many factors that affect consumer purchasing behavior, which is also the basis for studying consumer purchasing behavior. From the perspective of the relationship between purchase intention and purchase behavior, Huang Teng (2021) established a model of the influence mechanism of opinion leaders in circle marketing, and found that the popularity, interactivity and involvement of opinion leaders will significantly affect the purchase intention of circle consumers, and concluded that brands should pay attention to the accurate identification of opinion leaders in order to choose opinion leaders that are consistent with brand image and product positioning as much as possible. Through empirical evidence, it is concluded that the purchase intention will affect the purchase behavior, that is, the higher the purchase intention of the circle consumers, the higher the probability of purchasing behavior. Sun Wanqi (2023) conducted an empirical analysis of the purchase behavior of WeChat community marketing and the factors influencing it, and concluded that consumers' purchase intention can directly and significantly affect the purchase behavior.

4.2 The impact of cognition on purchasing behavior

K.D.L.R. Kapuge (2016) found that cognition and health awareness are the two key factors that determine the purchase intention of organic food, and have a significant positive impact on the purchase intention of organic food.

From the perspective of psychology, Lv Nannan and Zhang Peng (2023) compare online and offline impulse buying behaviors, and believe that online purchases are more likely to promote consumers' impulse buying behaviors than offline purchases. It is found that the upward trend in social media has a positive impact on consumers' impulse purchase behavior, and when formulating social media marketing communication strategies, enterprises should give more consideration to the ideal results that products can bring to consumers, so as to stimulate consumers' psychological simulation of results, so as to improve individuals' awareness of target value, shorten the purchase decision-making time, and improve purchase intention and purchase behavior.

4.3 Influence of external factors on purchasing behavior

From the perspective of the influence of external factors on purchasing behavior, external factors refer to factors other than the characteristics of the product itself. Niu Yanfang (2017) believes that the decisive role in whether consumers' purchase behavior produces purchase behavior is the purchase decision, that is, the consumer's purchase behavior is dominated by the purchase decision, and analyzes the marketing strategy of mainland supermarkets, and believes that the current situation of most supermarkets in mainland China is that the marketing means tend to be homogeneous, and the purchase incentives generated by attracting consumers' purchase decisions are seriously insufficient.

Luan Yafei et al. (2019) believe that the change of consumer attitudes is affected by three types of stimuli: the stimulation of enterprises, the stimulation of the surrounding environment and the stimulation of consumers' subjective factors, of which the first two categories belong to external factors, mainly including corporate advertising and word-of-mouth marketing. Advertising is an effective way to convey information to consumers, which will have an impact on consumers' attitudes. Cause marketing will increase consumers' favorability and recognition of the company, and the influence and image of the spokesperson will also affect consumers' perception of the company's image.

In addition, consumer attitudes are transitive, word-of-mouth marketing, market trends, etc. will also affect consumers' cognition, and consumer attitudes will have a direct impact on purchase behavior. Kathleen Jacobs et al. (2018) proposed that the buying environment, including service attitude and advertising, has a significant impact on purchasing behavior, especially the appropriate service attitude will play an important role in consumer purchasing behavior.

05

Review of research methods

At present, there are few studies on consumers' purchase of pet food by scholars at home and abroad, and regression analysis is mostly used. From the perspective of existing research, Xiao Yunyang et al. (2021) conducted a relatively comprehensive study, in order to study consumers' preferences for online pet food and the factors affecting their actual purchase behavior, they conducted a quantitative survey on consumers' pet food shopping behavior, collected 220 valid samples from pet owners with online shopping experience, and used the Logit model to test which consumer characteristics affect their online shopping preferences. The OLS regression model was used to show the actual pet food consumption behavior.

Rombach Meike and Dean David L. (2021) used a partial least squares structural equation model to find that pet food purchase participation has a positive impact on subjective and objective knowledge of pet food. Subjective knowledge appears to be the strongest factor influencing how much consumers value convenience, natural ingredients, value, and health claims as product attributes. Other analyses have also been used, such as David Gomez Baquero et al. (2018), which used cluster analysis, ANOVA and correspondence analysis to analyze consumer responses to the appearance of pet food.

06

Conclusion

To sum up, through the combing and summarizing of domestic and foreign literature, it can be seen that at present, domestic and foreign scholars have more in-depth research on pet food, purchase incentives, consumer cognition and purchase behavior, especially the literature on consumer purchase behavior is more abundant, but there are still deficiencies in related research.

Specifically, in terms of pet food, in the past few decades, sensory analysis of pet food has become an important research area in the pet food industry, but few studies have been conducted to understand pet owners' perceptions of pet food, and few studies have explored consumer attitudes towards imported pet food. In the case of the mainland, research on pet food has mostly focused on brand image, packaging design or marketing strategy, and rarely studied consumer purchasing behavior from a macro perspective.

In terms of purchase incentives, most studies consider incentives from a more specific perspective, and lack a more comprehensive consideration and systematic discussion. Although the influence of consumer cognition on behavior has been widely recognized, the interaction between consumer cognition and behavior needs to be further explored, and more attention needs to be paid to the factors affecting consumer cognition, especially external factors, such as cultural and other factors.

In terms of purchasing behavior, consumers' personality traits will directly affect their purchasing behavior, but the mechanism of how personality traits affect consumers' purchasing behavior is still incomplete and needs to be further explored. In addition, the understanding of how situational factors affect consumer purchasing behavior is not deep enough, and in general, few scholars have comprehensively studied these factors, that is, few scholars have studied the purchase inducements, cognition and behavioral relationships of consumers buying imported pet food, which is a part of future research that needs to be supplemented and improved.

1. According to the Administrative Measures for the Registration of Imported Feed and Feed Additives, overseas enterprises exporting feed and feed additives to China for the first time shall apply for import registration with the Ministry of Agriculture and obtain the import registration certificate of feed and feed additives; Those who have not obtained an import registration certificate shall not be sold or used in China.

When applying for import registration, an overseas enterprise shall entrust an agency in China to handle the application.

Feed and feed additives applying for import registration shall comply with the requirements of relevant laws, regulations and technical specifications of the place of production and China.

Second, on the registration process of imported feed

Preliminary Work - 2 Steps:

1. We assist in product technical assessment according to the composition of the product, classify the product category, and confirm whether the product meets the regulations and requirements of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of China;

2. Prepare the application materials and submit them to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of the People's Republic of China.

Application Process for China's Agriculture and Rural Areas - 3 Steps:

1. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of the People's Republic of China will review the application materials;

2. The application materials pass the review and enter the sample review and testing link;

3. The sample passed the review and test, and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of China issued the import registration certificate.