“Decision-making process of tomatoes purchase by generation Z: case study in the Slovak Republic”

The paper aims to investigate and assess the decision-making process of young Slovak consumers – generation Z – in the purchase of tomatoes. The respondents participatet in a questionnaire survey and blind testing of four to-mato samples (two samples were Slovak and another two were foreign tomatoes). For a deeper analysis of the collected data, five scientific hypotheses were formulated. The accuracy of provided hypotheses was verified using the following mathematical-statis-tical methods: Chi-Square test of independence, Mann-Whitney U-test, and as Chi test for equality of proportions between two samples. The research results show that generation Z buys tomatoes once a week or several times a month. Moreover, it was found out that most young consumers are mostly influenced by freshness, taste, quality of tomatoes, and general appearance, the least by packaging, brand/specific tomato grower, information on the packaging and references. According to all observed attributes within the blind testing of tomato by the respondents, the best-evaluated sample was the Slovak sample of tomatoes – the sample B. Subsequently, all respondents were provided with information about the tested tomatoes, and it can be stated that they would also actually buy Slovak sample B in the store. Finally, one can state that the higher price of this sample has no significant impact on the respondents of generation Z.


INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, food market is generally influenced by new modern dietary trends in the context of healthy eating, animal welfare, ethical and sustainable consumption (Šedík, Šugrová, Horská, & Nagyová, 2017). Consumers are increasingly aware of the strong relationship between health and the need for a balanced diet. Safe foods are healthy, nutritious, and environmentally friendly due to ecological, sustainable, and clean production (B. Zhang, Fu, Huang, Wang, Xu, & L. Zhang, 2018). Kádeková, Récky, Nagyová, Košičiarová, and Holienčinová (2017) state that people are entirely aware of the importance of a healthy lifestyle. According to Perez-Cueto et al. (2017), achieving a sustainable and healthy diet is a major social interest, and it is a daily matter for consumers. At the same time, healthy eating can be sustainable because it has a balanced diet rich in the food of vegetable origin (vegetables, fruits, legumes beans).
With the arrival of globalization in grocery stores, the traveling distance of food has increased significantly. Although this allows for the nearly continuous availability of a wide range of foods, regardless of seasonal conditions, consumers are increasingly concerned about transparency and food safety because they cannot understand the complex dynamics of the current food chains. In addition to these concerns, the last sequence of food scandals has threatened the credibility of the global food market (Meyerding, Trajer, & Lehberger, 2019).
In the last years in the Slovak Republic, tomatoes were consumed the most from all kinds of vegetables. Therefore, this paper is dealing with tomatoes. The authors decided to focus on a specific generation of consumers and chose the generation Z to investigate their purchasing and decision-making process on the Slovak tomato market. Similar research in the Slovak Republic has not been carried out. It was important to examine the consumer's attitudes in the context of the consumption of tomatoes as the most consumed vegetable.
Consumers' behavior in the Slovak vegetable market has generally been reviewed in the framework of the authors' previous research.

Consumers and vegetables purchase
The variety of fruits and vegetables in today's supermarkets is huge. Diversity across species has also increased considerably, with differences in size, shape, color, taste, production, and in the way of trading. Given the increased variability available to consumers, many of the product varieties offered are probably unknowable to the naive consumer, leading to uncertainty as to what qualities and taste experiences they expect (Schifferstein, Wehrle, & Carbon, 2019).
Ariyawardana, Ganegodage, and Mortlock (2017) state that fresh and processed vegetables will reach consumers only after they have passed through supply-customer chains, which may consist of manufacturers and importers, processors, wholesalers, and retailers. Although fresh produce chains are less complicated, the processed vegetable chains are becoming increasingly complex as the products can come from several countries or be repackaged. Šugrová and Šumichrast (2018) report that in today's strong competitive environment, it is essential for both vegetable growers and business operators to understand the consumers, their needs, purchasing habits, preferences, and identify those factors that significantly affect their purchasing decision-making process in the vegetable market. The authors add that each consumer has individual preferences because he/she has the choice of an increasingly wide range of vegetables, which is significantly influenced by imports of vegetables.

Vegetables/tomatoes consumption and production
Tomatonews.com (2019) state that the annual production of tomatoes is around 160 million tons worldwide. In contrast, three times more potatoes and six times more rice are grown worldwide. However, about a quarter of these 160 million tons are grown for the processing industry, making tomatoes the world's most important vegetable for processing. In the Slovak Republic, according to Bindics (2019), 60 thousand tons of tomatoes are consumed annually. Their share of the total vege-

Generation Z and their consumer behavior
Wood (2013) states that generation Z refers to those individuals born from the mid-1990s to 2000. Four trends characterize generation Z: focusing on innovations, and insistence on convenience, an underlying desire for security, and finally a tendency toward escapism. Schlossberg (2016) reports that generation Z is even more economical than millennials, but in a different way. Generation Z has higher expectations than generation of millennials. Youth hates the feeling of being disrespected. Millennials are more tolerant than teens. Generation Z does not have brand loyalty. Teens impact the way their parents spend more than millennials. Retailers should focus on generation Z rather than millennials because they are a "barometer." According to Priporas, Stylos, and Fotiadis (2017), generation Z will be the biggest challenge for marketing and as consequently for retail, as members of this generation behave differently from consumers and focus much more on innovation. Ozkan and Solmaz (2015), based on their research, state that generation Z is more modern; knowing what it wants and using smartphones is the most important part of their lives.
The main objective of this scientific paper is to investigate and evaluate the decision-making process of generation Z in the purchase of tomatoes in the Slovak Republic.

DATA AND METHODS
The secondary data needed to process the subject matter were obtained from available resourcesscientific articles from online databases, electronic documents, and websites. Available data from online database the Slovak Research Institute of Agriculture and Food Economics were used too.
Primary data were obtained by conducting a questionnaire survey, as well as using a blind test method. The survey aimed to investigate the consumer behavior of the generation Z living in the Slovak Republic when buying tomatoes and to identify the factors that influence them the most when buying tomatoes. The survey was conducted at the Faculty of Economics and Management, Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra. Three hundred and nineteen (319) respondents of generation Z representing the target group were tested from 19 to 29 March 2018. The questionnaire consisted of ten questions related to the subject matter (seven questions were closed, two open, and one scaling question), and eight closed socio-demographic issues through which the characteristics of the respondents could be obtained. After responding to the survey questions, blind testing of tomatoes followed.
Blind testing of tomatoes was attended by the same respondents and at the same time as the questionnaire survey (319 respondents). The blind test aimed to determine what their decision-making and behavior is before and after giving specific information (producer, country of origin, price, place where the sample can be purchased) concerning the tested tomato samples. Based on the tested attributes, it was also interesting to find out whether respondents could identify which samples are from domestic production and which are imported.
All responses were recorded in a form consisting of seven questions, of which six were closed and one question was semi-open. There were four samples of tomatoes (two Slovak samples of cherry tomatoes and two imported). Respondents evaluated the color, shape, general appearance, taste, and aroma of all four tested samples. Survey participants had no information about the country of origin, the producer, the variety, the price of tomatoes, etc. The role of respondents was to select the tomato sample that they liked the most, according to the attribute. Subsequently, there was investigated which of the tested tomato samples in their opinion were imported. After that, respondents received complete information on all tested tomato samples. Finally, in the last question, respondents should have indicated which of the tested tomato samples they would actually buy from the shop based on the blind test, as well as the information provided. Besides, respondents also had to state the reason for the answer. H5: There is a significant difference between the impact of factors on consumer's gender in the decision-making process of tomatoes purchase.
The accuracy of formulated hypotheses was verified using the following mathematical-statistical methods: • Chi-Square test of independence; • Mann-Whitney U-test; • Chi test for equality of proportions between two samples.
The data analyzed using Excel were interpreted verbally. Three hundred and nineteen (319) respondents from which 292 buy tomatoes at least rarely and others do not buy it at all participated in this survey. Table 1 shows the completed sample structure regarding socio-demographic data. According to socio-demographic data, the biggest group represents females (71.16%) with completed high school (74.29%), living with parents and siblings (57.68%) in the city (40.13%). Majority of them have monthly income less than 400 EUR (83.07%).

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
As can be seen in the following figure (Figure 1), most of the respondents from generation Z buy tomatoes once a week (29.15%) or several times a month (21.00%). Only 0.31% of consumers buy tomatoes daily. There were collected 319 suitable answers for this question.
Dependence between the frequency of tomato purchases and gender ( Figure 2) was point of interest too. There was formulated a hypothesis that there is significant relationship between gender and tomato purchase frequency. To confirm a hypothesis, Chi-Square test of independence with Excel function CHISQ.TEST was used. According to p-value (0.287) > α(0.05) this scientific hypothesis was not confirmed, so there is not significant relationship between tomato purchase frequency and the gender in generation Z. According to Figure 2, it can be seen that most of young consumers buy tomatoes once a week (25.00% of male, 30.84% of female) and the least of them buy tomatoes daily (only 1.09% of male).
According to the findings, most respondents buy the cherry on stem type of tomatoes (34.80%), although this value is comparable to cherry berries/ choppy (28.41%) and classical size of tomatoes (27.31%). Moreover, it can be claimed that 9.03% of respondents buy middle cocktail tomatoes ( Figure 3). Respondents could answer with a multiple choice. There were collected answers from 291 suitable respondents and 454 choices of answers.  More than 79.00% of respondents buy tomatoes in supermarket/hypermarket and less than 8.00% buy it at the marketplace and at the farms, according to the research. Only 0.68% of them buy tomatoes at farm markets. Šugrová and Šumichrast (2018) confirm that currently consumers buy vegetables most often in supermarkets. As can be seen in Figure 4, there is more than 63.00% of respondents from the countryside who buy tomatoes in the supermarket/hypermarket. It is kind of paradox because most of the supermarkets are in the cities. And 60.00% of consumers who buy on wholesale are from the countryside as well (Figure 4). According to this information, scientific hypothesis whether there is relationship between the place of residence and place of purchase was in-teresting. A hypothesis says that there is relationship because people from rural areas have more opportunities to shop from regional farm producers and yard sale. Therefore, the Chi-Square test of independence with Excel function CHISQ.TEST in Excel was used. But null hypothesis was denied according to p-value (0.755) > α(0.05). It follows that, according to the research, people from generation Z, regardless of the place of residence, buy mostly in supermarkets, so there is no significant relationship between the place of residence and place of purchase.
Respondents were asked if they know some Slovak producer of tomatoes. It can be concluded that 34.94% of male and 35.57% of female answered    that they know some tomato producer. This aroused interest in whither there is a significant difference in the proportion of males and females knowing the Slovak producers of tomatoes. Chi test for equality of proportions between two samples was used to test the hypothesis. The test shows that U (0.578) < U tab (1.645) with α (0.05), and, therefore, there is not a significant difference between those proportions. The hypothesis was confirmed. It means that the proportion of females who know Slovak producers of tomatoes is not higher than the proportion of males. There were collected 293 suitable answers to this question.
The following figure ( Figure 5) demonstrates actors influencing generation Z decision-making process when buying tomatoes. Respondents on the 5-point scale rated 14 factors that impact them when buying tomatoes and ranging from 1 to 5 (1 = the maximum impact, 5 = no impact  (2003) found out that labeling and product information, nutrition information, information about safety, and production descriptions are important attributes when choosing food.
References of tomato purchases according to the country of origin, without tasting and pointing on the price of tomatoes, are revealed in the next figure ( Figure 6) as well. According to it, most young consumers of tomatoes do not care about the country of origin (54.55%), and 43.26% of respondents answered that they prefer Slovak tomatoes. Figure 6 is created according to 319 suitable answers. Šugrová and Šumichrast (2018) found out that the respondents evaluate the country of origin as a factor that has an average impact on the vegetable purchase.
Four tomato samples were tested using a blind test as a next step. Samples were selected randomly, two Slovak samples and two imported samples (samples B and D were from Slovakia, and samples A and C were imported). Respondents tested each sample based on five attributes (general appearance, shape, color, smell, and taste). Their task was to choose one tomato sample, according to each test attribute. The tomatoes were always tested from sample A to sample D, with no sample information given to respondents in order not to influence them during testing.
As can be seen in the following table (Table 2), during the blind test, the Slovak sample B, except for the aroma, was best evaluated. According to the tomato aroma, the respondents evaluated the best Slovak sample D. Foreign samples A and C were worse than domestic tomatoes during the whole blind test. Saba et al. (2018) have found in their research out that consumers perceive the freshness of vegetables, as well as tomatoes based on visual stimuli, followed by sensory stimuli/texture dimension. In particular, consumers used a visual incentive to indicate the freshness of tomatoes.
In fact, the clear color of the product, as well as the stalks, contributed to the freshness concept, which confirms that consumers can judge the degree of freshness based on their color expectations. Schifferstein, Wehrle, and Carbon (2019) add that consumers use vegetable color as a guide to product identification, to assess the safety, quality, and maturity of a product. Based on these attributes, they conclude on the sensory properties of vegetables.
For many types of vegetables, people are familiar with color prototypes (for example orange for carrots, red for tomatoes, green for cucumbers), while colors make it easier to identify the class of products and thus encourage consumers to buy. Relatively subtle color differences (for example, several shades of a red tomato) can already have a significant impact on consumer expectations and food preferences. These color changes can be interpreted as meaningful information. They can be used, for example, as indicators of fresh-  In the Slovak Republic, it is a huge difference among tomatoes from foreign countries and tomatoes with Slovak origin. Slovak tomatoes are, in general, more expensive. Therefore, the preferences, according to the country of origin, without knowing the price and after respondents found out the price, were tested. It can be concluded that, according to Chi-Square test of independence (made from data in Table 3), there is no significant dependence among four tested tomato samples. The reason is that p-value (0.177) > α(0.05). It can be claimed that there is no dependence between preferences of tomato purchases according to price. As such, a hypothesis is not confirmed. In Table 3 it can be seen that in generation Z, just a few people care about the price of tomatoes. Just 10.40% of re-spondents would change their opinion in a case they find out the real higher price of Slovak tomatoes than foreign tomatoes. Oppositely more than 80.00% of young consumers who firstly wanted to buy from import changed their opinions and wanted to buy rather a Slovak sample after finding out the price. Šugrová et al. (2018) state that the price of vegetables is rated by the respondents as a factor that has an average impact on the purchase of vegetables.
According to the research results, finding, if there is a statistically significant relationship between gender and factors, which affect the generation Z in purchases, was interesting. Question: "How much does this factor affect you in tomato purchase?" were given to respondents according to each factor (price, quality, country of origin, discount/sale, brand/specific grower, references, taste, general appearance, freshness, aroma, habit, price/weight ratio, packaging as well as information on packaging). There were collected 291-293 answers. From this number of respondents who answered a question about each factor, 91-92 were males and 199-201 females. Some respondents did not answer all the questions. Respondents could choose from 5-point scale value, where 1 (the maximum impact) and 5 (no impact). The only factor in which a significant difference of impact on gender in the consumers decision-making process was proved based on Mann-Whitney U-test is freshness (Figure 7). In this case, Z value is (1.723) > critical value (1.645). In other factors, there were not claimed statistically significant differences in the impact on the gender of consumers in the decision-making process. Results of all tested hypotheses are shown in Table 4.  process is most influenced by freshness and the least by packaging of tomatoes. Research results point to the fact that generation Z do not care about the country of origin or prefer Slovak tomatoes.
According to blind test results, where respondents tested four tomato samples (2 Slovak tomato samples -B and D, as well as two imported tomato samples -A and C), it can be stated that the best-evaluated sample was Slovak sample B. During blind test of tomatoes, respondents had no information about the tested samples. After providing information on tested tomatoes (price, country of origin, etc.), most respondents chose the same sample.
Results of the statistical analysis show that there was not proven significant relationship between tomato purchase frequency and gender in generation Z. Also, it can be stated that there does not exist any relationship between the place of residence and place of tomato purchase. The proportion of women in generation Z who know Slovak producers of tomatoes is not higher than the proportion of men. The Slovak tomato producers are known in the minds of both males and females equally. Moreover, we found out that tomato freshness has a different impact on the decision-making process of purchases regarding gender.
An important finding was that generation Z is not price-sensitive concerning the purchase of tomatoes. Young consumers do not care about the country of origin when buying tomatoes, but after they have been tasted, they have definitely decided on Slovak tomatoes. Therefore, it is necessary to focus on the education of the young generation of consumers given the benefits of consuming Slovak vegetables in general compared to the imports, and this despite the large differences in prices between Slovak and imported vegetables.
Finally, the next research might be conducted for an in-depth study of other generations and their decision-making process in the tomato market, as well as the vegetable market in general, and, based on the future research results regarding demographic segmentation, to formulate precisely targeted marketing strategies of retailers.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The paper is a part of the research project VEGA 1/0502/17 "Consumer personality and its impact on emotional behaviour and decision making," solved at the Department of Marketing and Trade, Faculty of Economics and Management, Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra.