The Price Determinants of Taiwanese Fermented Tea: Marketing or Quality?

Abstract

The Taiwanese tea industry is facing a variety of challenges; both domestically and inter- nationally Domestically cultivation surface area and agrarian labor are decreasing year by year Internationally counterfeit and lower-quality tea imports flooding the Taiwanese market cause safety quality and pricing concerns for domestic producers In order to un- cover the impact of these factors on producers this study implemented structural equation modeling to examine both the market and quality-related factors that subsequently affect the pricing of processed Taiwanese fermented tea Preliminary interviews comprehensive literature review and in-depth interviews served to outline the factors affecting both the marketing quality and pricing of fermented tea products Five factors: Certification Tea Competition Value-Added Services Market Institutionalization and Marketing Activities comprised the market-related factors Four fac- tors: Altitude Cooperation Technology and Quality comprised the quality-related factors A survey was created underwent five revisions and finalized versions were issued during the period of September 2019 – March 2020 71 surveys were issued in person with 71 fully-completed surveys collated; resulting in an effective response rate of 100% Implementing a partial least squared structural equation model (PLS-SEM) the fac- tors derived from collated data were analyzed Additional controls in the form of age and experience were included All factors were found to have significant impacts on producer price of Taiwanese fermented tea in the two base models (Models 1 and 2) Additionally two exploratory models were created (Models 3 and 4) Quality was found to have a more significant effect on Price over Marketing

Date of Award	2020
Original language	English
Supervisor	Min-Hsien Chiang (Supervisor)