Abstract:
Dairy products are defined as food produced from the milk of mammals. They are considered
high energy yielding food products with more nutritive value. Dairy products for human
consumption are mainly sourced from the milk of cows, goats, sheep, yaks, and camels. In Sri
Lanka, it is basically from cows and goats. Yogurt, ice cream, curd, milk powder, cheese, yogurt
milk and UHT milk are the regularly consuming processed dairy products in the local market.
Promoting dairy industry is very important to Sri Lanka due to two reasons. Firstly, the dairy
industry has a great potential to contribute considerably to the economic development of Sri
Lanka. At present, both private sector and the government sector are involved in dairy industry.
However, the local production of milk and milk products are very much below the requirement
of the country. Secondly, the milk products are a great source of vitamins and nutrients, and
have several health claims, such as glowing skin, healthy bones and teeth, muscles, weight loss,
less stress and healthy body.
The trend of consumer behavior is changing with the time due to economic, environmental and
cultural changes as the milk consumption behaviour has also been changed over time. In recent
years, the number of processed dairy products and their derivatives available in the local market
have gone up significantly. However, there has not been much research carried out on
identifying the behaviour of local consumers in dairy market, which is very important to
develop strategies to promote dairy production and consumption. Determining the consumer
behaviour is very complex and complicated task because it is influenced by number of factors.
There are number of theories and models have been proposed by scholars to predict the
consumer behaviour and each of those models has its own strengths and weaknesses when it
comes to application. Out of the behavioral models, the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB)
model proposed by Ajzen (1985) can be described as a very versatile and popular model.
Accordingly, this study aimed to identify the factors affecting on the processed dairy product
consumption behavior in Kandy district of Sri Lanka employing the TPB model.
