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Abstract
There is a growing demand for international food in America, but our knowledge is limited on what drives the demand for such food which are ready-to-eat (RTE) or pre-cooked. We examine consumers’ choice of international foods by focusing on primary grocery shoppers in New Jersey, a highly ethnically diverse state in the United States. Although we rely on earlier studies as guidance, unlike most existing studies that focus on purchasing intentions, we focus on American consumers' current purchasing behavior because consumers' purchase and consumption behaviors often are repetitive which leads consumers to develop habits (Ji and Wood, 2007). We use both descriptive statistics and discrete choice modeling to fulfill our study objectives. We identified several RTE international food that our respondents purchased at grocery stores. We find that the following factors significantly impacted consumers’ purchasing behavior of RTE international food: authenticity, consumers’ age, education, and gender.