Dilani Saverimuthu

Dilani is a PhD-student at the Department of Agricultural and Food Market Research of the University of Bonn, Germany. After her graduation in Nutritional Science in 2010 Dilani received a scholarship from the Theodor-Brinkmann Graduate School Bonn to examine ‘The relevance of sustainable aspects in consumers’ purchase decisions – on the example of milk’ within her PhD research project.

 

To address her research topic Dilani will conduct a choice experiment using Sawtooth’s CBC module as well as the Latent Class module to investigate whether consumers can be distinguished into certain groups with respect to their preferences for sustainable product attributes.

Research Goals

In her thesis Dilani will conduct an extensive literature review on the relevance of ethical and sustainable characteristics in consumers’ product perception and purchase decision.
Based on this literature review she will investigate on the one hand whether consumers explicitly trade off tangible attributes (e.g. price) against intangible ones (e.g. ethical and sustainable attributes) and on the other hand examine the relative importance of different sustainable attributes. In her empirical analysis Dilani will apply a choice experiment using Latent Class analysis in order to check whether consumers can be distinguished into certain groups according to their preferences and decision behavior. The results of the study will be valuable for companies, retailers and policy makers.