Pineapple is an important economic crop of Thailand. The key problem is the oversupply of products and the volatility of pineapple prices. In the past, Thailand had not focused on fresh pineapples which leads to lose opportunities in the commercial market. Actively promoting and driving, fresh pineapple will be a source of income and help stabilize the economy of Thailand. This study aimed to study the potential of fresh pineapples for export under good agricultural standards including the efficiency of producing fresh pineapples, demographic factors and marketing mix factors affecting consumer behavior of fresh fruit pineapples, factors affecting decision in fresh pineapple production for export strategies for building brand communication for pineapple production and export, and the export value of fresh pineapples model. The data were surveyed under three sample groups such as group1: 282 pineapple growers in Ratchaburi, Phetchaburi and Prachuap Khiri Khan provinces; Group2: 320 foreign consumers in Asia by studying Chinese, Hong Kong, Laos, Singapore, Malaysia, Myanmar, Vietnam and Cambodia consumers and 7 successful pineapple growers. The results are as follows
The fresh pineapple cultivated is Pattawia, Phulae, Nanglae, Phetchaburi1, MD2, etc. with density of 7,223 suckers per rai. The average yield was 5.88 tons/ rai, the average production cost excluding the cost of suckers was 21,106 baht/rai. The average return depends on the pineapple species, the average return for the Pattawia was 39,932 baht/rai, while the Phetchaburi1 was 120,000 baht/rai. In term of production efficiency, it was found that the samples of fresh pineapple growers had better compliance with the GAP standard than the factory pineapple growers.
When comparing with the factory pineapple grower based on Pattawia, the average production cost was lower than the fresh pineapple growers about 3,990 baht/rai and the average return was lower than the fresh pineapple growers approximately 17,561 baht/rai.
The factors affecting production efficiency are GAP standard training and fresh pineapple cultivation training. The main incentives for fresh pineapple production was the price of pineapples. The factors affecting the cultivation decisions of fresh pineapples are province, GAP compliance and fresh pineapple cultivation training.
The consumption behavior of pineapples of foreigners in Asia was found that the respondents preferred purchasing fresh pineapple 1 time / month bought from the fresh market and supermarkets / shopping malls, with the price ranges from 41 baht and up. The top two purchaseobjectives are buying for yourself and your family. The factors that affect the purchase decision are good taste, nutritional value and convenience place. The target market for exporting fresh pineapple are China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia.
There were 2 kinds of brand builders for pineapple, grower-made and company-made (OEM). In brand awareness stage, most growers preferred using social media, event marketing and product display, in brand preference and brand trial stages, media used most were free trial, free product tasting, award winning display and personal selling. For brand loyalty stage, strategies used most were consistence of high quality product, appropriate price and convenience place. Two topics of documentary video were produced, “High Quality Pineapple Production” (13.12 mins) and “Pineapple Branding” (12.08 mins) .
For future export trends, it was found that export value of fresh or chilled pineapple continues increasing over the past two years. The forecast model using ARIMA(4,1,0) could predict the export value for six months in advance, January until June 2019 which were between 33,179,616 and 34,768,203 Bath.
When publishing the research results to farmers on the topic “Producing fresh pineapples for export”, it found that the participants were satisfied to a great extent especially speakers and the benefits received from training. After training, they gained more knowledge and understanding about producing good fresh pineapple and the development approach to future exports.