Influence of Food Attributes on Purchasing Behavior of Food Deseret Residents in Eastern Greensboro, NC: Multidimensional Scaling Approach

Consumers purchase food because of the perceived nutritional advantages, taste, family, cultural preferences, and previous purchase habits. This study aims at using multidimensional scaling to identify the similarities and or dissimilarities between the variables: (1) affordability and taste (2) high nutritional value/ high level of food hygiene and (3) freshness/reasonable level of nutrition /food hygiene based on the underlying dimensions used by Eastern Greensboro residents in rating these variables. [1] Sampling protocol was used to determine the appropriate sample size for this study. Survey Sampling Incorporated, from whom we purchased the sample, used the sampling protocol to draw a random sample from the population of Eastern Greensboro, North Carolina. Data was collected by trained enumerators via telephone survey using the Survey Monkey platform. We used multidimensional Scaling to analyze and translate the data onto a perceptual map to facilitate visualization of the differences between the variables and to determine the dimensions underlying the observed orientation. Results show that food desert residents may be using the inferred underlying dimensions: 1) desirability and 2) accessibility to make judgement about the food attributes investigated in this study. Results further show that the variables: affordability/taste, and high nutritional level/high level of food hygiene are closely oriented on the perceptual map. This implies that consumers may be using affordability/taste as proxy for high nutritional value/high level of food hygiene since it may be easier to recognize and assess the attribute taste/affordability than it is to recognize and assess high nutritional level/high level of food hygiene.

residents are low-income earners and they have less access to grocery stores [12]. The phenomenon of "food deserts" is because of the consolidation and centralization of the food system [13].
Food desert residents must travel one mile or more to access grocery stores. In the year 2015, in the U.S., there were more than 20,000 census tracts with citizens earning low income and residing between 0.5 miles to 10 miles away from supermarkets.

Food Deserts in North Carolina
North Carolina is the ninth hungriest State in the U.S. [14]. A report from the North Carolina Alliance for Health (2014) stated that more than 349 food deserts exist in 80 counties in North Carolina. The research area, Eastern Greensboro, is in Guilford County, North Carolina. Guilford County has 24 food desert census tracts located mostly in areas with high-minority populations, such as Southeast and East Greensboro and Central High Point.
The absence of supermarkets encourages the dependence on convenient stores and fast-food outlets (Dubowitz et. al, 2015), resulting in the consumption of unhealthy diets of low or no nutrient value such as sugar-enriched beverages, candy, alcohol, cakes, and other delicacies [15]. Supermarkets provide an array of healthy choices at the lowest price [13] and access to supermarkets correlates with reduction in rates of obesity occurrence (Michimi & Wimberly, 2010). In the study area, there have been initiatives to improve access, which include establishing a Community Co-op grocery store and an urban farm that produces fresh vegetables, in addition to providing nutrition education classes for residents.
Unfortunately, the grocery store was closed in 2019 due to low patronage [16], however, the other two initiatives continue to operate. The impetus for this study is to investigate and uncover the underlying dimensions that influence how residents evaluate and use food attributes in making food purchase decisions.

Food Attributes (variables)
A clear understanding of consumer purchase behavior will enable extension educators and public health authorities to assist food desert residents in making a conscious effort to use information about food attributes to make healthier food purchase decisions. Below is a summary of consumers perception of food attributes investigated in this study Taste: Consumers develop taste for food based on the perception formed because of the stimulation of the gustatory nerve. Taste highly affects food choice. Effect of taste on food consumption is dependent on the age and sex of the consumer [17].
Price/affordability: The amount of money a consumer is willing to sacrifice to obtain a product [5]. Consumers sacrifice quality of a food product for affordability. However, manipulation of the price of a product that gives satisfaction to consumers can leverage consumer willingness to pay for a product [18].
Freshness: Basic agricultural products that have not been processed are identified as fresh foods [11]. A fresh vegetable or Health: Factors that motivate consumer purchase of healthy products are concerns about body mass index, diet status, weight, health and prevention of chronic diseases, lifestyles, personality traits [20]. While healthy foods are assumed to contain less calories than the actual amount (Carels et al., 2006), unhealthy foods are perceived to contain more calories than the actual amount (Booth, 1987). However, healthiness of food is not based only on calorific content but on multiple nutritional attributes [21].

Methodology Data collection and sampling method
The target group for the study was residents of census tracts classified as food deserts in Eastern Greensboro, North Carolina.

Criteria for validity and reliability of multidimensional scaling
The number of dimensions chosen should be appropriate for the data set ensuring that there is no misrepresentation of the data set. Two dimensions are usually used for the representation of results for easy comprehension of results. Secondly, stress level determines the fitness of the multidimensional scaling model used.
Borgatti (1997) explains stress as "the degree of correspondence between the distances among points implied by the MDS map and the matrix input by the user. Calculation of stress level followed Kruskal (1964) formulation as: High stress levels, for example, a level of 20% indicates the unfitness of the model whereas a 2.5% stress indicates an excellent goodness of fit.

Results
Non-metric multidimensional scaling output reflects the correlation between the distances and the proximity rankings of the objects [22]. Table 1 shows the distances between the variables.
Spatial orientation of the variables shows that the distance between the variables: affordability/taste, and high nutritional value/d high level of food hygiene is 0.921, and the proximity ( Table 2)

Discussion and Conclusion
Results from the analysis show that consumers ranked affordability/taste highly on both dimensions 1 and 2. Dimension 1 is inferred to be based on desirability of food attributes and dimension 2 is inferred to be based on degree of accessibility.
Affordability/taste ranking high on dimension 2 indicates that the ability of consumers to access and consume food is highly influenced by the price and taste of the food. Consumers tend to buy food that is tasty and inexpensive, encouraging the consumption of less expensive unhealthy food. This pattern of food purchase behavior may be reflecting the low-income status of food desert residents. Additionally, because food desert resident lives in a poor food environment, they are conditioned to prefer inexpensive tasty food items-food items that are affordable and tasty. Socioeconomic status is one variable among others that affects the decision to consume food after the establishment of taste feedback [24]. The ability to merge price and taste can facilitate a positive influence on food choice [25]. Therefore, discounting the price of healthy food can lead to consumption of healthy food. Affordability/taste was also highly ranked by consumers along dimension 1, implying that consumers highly desire food that are affordable and tasty [26]. The perceptual map also shows that, consumers ranked high nutritional level/high level of food hygiene high on dimension 1, indicating that consumers highly desire nutritious and healthy foods. This implies that consumers consider the nutritional value of food when making food purchase decisions. However, consumers ranked high nutritional level/high level of food hygiene on dimension 2, probably because it is not easy to assess the nutritional /hygiene level of foods, and that they perceive nutritious foods are not accessible because of where they live. [27][28][29] We also note that the orientation on the perceptual map indicates that affordability/taste, and high nutritional level/high level of food hygiene cluster together along dimension 1 [30]. This implies that consumers may be using affordability and taste as a proxy for high nutritional level and high level of food hygiene because they find it difficult to assess the hygienic and nutritional value of a product.
Freshness, reasonable level of nutrition/food hygiene ranked lowly on both dimension 1 and dimension 2. On dimension 1, consumers are not highly desirable of freshness and reasonable level of nutrition and food hygiene during purchases, probably because it is not easy to assess the freshness of all food items since the nature (raw or processed) of food items is not defined. Also, on dimension 2 [31] . The rank of freshness, reasonable level of nutrition/food hygiene indicate the difficulty of assessing freshness and nutrition as previously discussed. However, defining the nature (raw or processed) of the food items could help consumers properly rank the influence of freshness on their purchases.
Given, residents of food deserts seem to employ the inferred dimensions: 1) desirability of the food attribute and 2) accessibility(ease of assessing the attribute and availability of food with attribute for making purchasing decisions), policy makers should endeavor to put in place those policies that would make

American Journal of Biomedical Science & Research
Copy@ Terrence Thomas food more available and desirable to food desert residents [32,33].
One approach could entail modifying the food environment to make healthy food accessible and affordable both in terms of availability and ease of assessing the nutritional value of all foods made available [34,35]. This could include local food production and nutrition education programs that employ hand-on approaches to train residents to read and evaluate food labels, how to shop wisely and how to prepare nutritious and tasty meals. All such efforts should consider that residents have been conditioned by the food desert environment to eat tasty and inexpensive unhealthy food.
Therefore, approaches should be designed to meet residents where they are and try to graft the desirable change in behavior onto some aspect of current behavior [36][37][38].