Relationship between plant signs and consumer decisions

A survey with 247 customers was carried out in four german horticultural sh ops to identify the relationship between plant signs and consumer preferenc es. Objective were poinsettia plants. Approximatly 50 to 60 percent of the variance could be explained by the plant signs included into regression ana lysis and 70% with the two main components of a principal component analysi s. For each of the shops where the survey took place different plant signs were identified as relevant. The results show that it is not possible to ex plain customer decisions by using a simple additive approach where the fina l decision is seen as the result of the addition of partial decisions. But the combination of principal component analysis and regression analysis may help to show which plants signs are most important for growers to satisfy customers needs. Also it seems to be neccesary to record the customer ranki ngs not only as scalar values. Confrontation of PCA-results with the result s of multiple regression points out that using multiple regression has limi ted validity in this kind of experiments if there are variables with large ranges and intercorrelations.