Factor affecting elderly consumer buying attitude on Thailand OTOP product

Abstract

One Tambon One Product (OTOP) is a local entrepreneurship stimulus program designed by Thailand and has been initiated since 2001. This OTOP program aims to support locally made, marketed products of each of Thailand's 7,255 tambons (sub-district). This product has been inspired from One Village One Product (OVOP) program of Japan and has been successfully used as economic enabler to the local enterprenures. This research aims to expand the OTOP product into the elderly consumer segment which is presently becoming the greater proportion. This research conducted extensive and systematic focus group and survey on elderly consumers and used the ordinal logistic regression analysis to identify the factors which will be used as design quality and concepts for designing and marketing the five major groups of OTOP products. The overall summary indicates that out of the 1,275 elderly, only 427 (43%) are currently prefer and have strong attitude to buy the existing OTOP product. The odds ratio were used as measure of buying opportunities. The results of analysis indicate that gender and occupation of elderly greatly affect the odd ratio and used to define the product concepts. We also found that female under 70 years old have stronger chances to buy the OTOP product comparing with male. Based on the analysis, the age of consumer seems to have stronger relationship with the buying opportunity than the gender. Hence the age of the consumer that is less than 70 years are the vital factor when designing the OTOP productd.