Branded Vegetable Oil and Consumer Preference among Students of Delta State Polytechnics

This study examined branded vegetable oil and consumer preference among students of Delta State Polytechnics. Several brands exist in the market, consumer choice frequently changes as per new innovations, changes in test like and dislike related to vegetable oil, vegetable oil is an important element in the food items. Thus, there is need to know the factors that influence consumer preference. To achieve this objective, a structured questionnaire was developed to measure the variables that influence consumer preference towards vegetable oil. The stratified random sampling technique was adopted to select the sample object, a sample size of 397 was determined using Taro Yamene's formula and Bowleys proportion allocation formula was adopted to allocate questionnaire to strata. Copies of questionnaire were distributed to students of Delta state Polytechnics in the three senatorial districts and 320 copies of questionnaire was suitable for analysis. Cronbach Alpha was used to test the reliability of the research instrument. All variables exceeded 0.70. The hypotheses tested using Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) showed that brand awareness, perceived quality and brand image have positive effect on consumer preference. The findings equally show that brand awareness is the most contributing factor to consumer preference having the highest β - value of 0.437. The study therefore concluded that consumer awareness of a particular brands leads to purchase of that brand. Based on the findings, the study recommended that Brand manager should actively promote and improve brand awareness of their vegetable oil brands to ensure that consumers recognizes and recall the brand through frequent advertisement and Vegetable Oil Company should dedicate effort and resources to improve on quality in terms of taste and flavor of vegetable oil.