Consumer attitudes towards organic versus conventional food with specific quality attributes

By Hanna Stolz, M. Stolze, U. Hamm, Meike Janssen, Eric Ruto. 2011

123 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract This paper describes the findings from a consumer survey conducted as part of the EU-funded research project QualityLowInputFood (QLIF). The objective was to segment occasional organic consumers with regard to their preferences for organic, conventional and conventional-plus products, i.e., conventional products with a specific attribute that also applies to organic products. In other words, these conventional-plus products are placed between organic and conventional food products. In addition, we aimed at analysing differences between consumer segments regarding their price sensitivity and attitudes towards food. The survey used choice experiments to investigate occasional organic consumer preferences for the different types of products. In subsequent standardized face-to-face interviews we collected data on consumer attitudes towards food that could explain the observed preferences. The attitudes were summarized in attitude factors, using factor analysis. The responses from the interviews and choice experiments were analysed by latent class models. These econometric models were used to identify segments within a group of individuals for their preference structure and to relate membership in each segment to consumer characteristics. Two segments of occasional organic consumers were identified. Consumers in segment 1 strongly preferred organic products and were less price sensitive. Furthermore, consumers in this segment showed a significantly higher level of agreement with most of the investigated attitude factors than consumers in segment 2. The latter consisted of consumers who were significantly more price sensitive and preferred conventional-plus and conventional products rather than organic products. Communicating quality attributes represents a promising marketing tool of product differentiation and information for both organic and conventional food marketers. The price sensitivity of parts of occasional organic consumers suggests that the perceived price-performance ratio of organic products needs to be increased by targeted pricing and communication strategies integrating product-relevant information. If not, conventional-plus products, representing a cheaper alternative, might be preferred by parts of the occasional organic consumers.

Subfields: Food Science, Marketing, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9b003640613a099ebb9cbbc4f710a0e7d819711a

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In Food Science

1. G. Schifani

In Marketing

1. M. Borrello
2. L. Cembalo

In Plant Science

1. A. Mushunje
2. S. Yusuf
3. G. Schifani
4. G. Eyinade

Citations in the corpus

• The willingness to consume organic food: A review (2021, background): “Several studies (for instance, Marian et al., 2014; Melovic et al., 2020; Paul & Rana, 2012; Pawlewicz, 2020; Shafie & Rennie, 2012; Stolz et al., 2011) have observed that price premium is one of the main obstacles in the purchase of organic food, while the studies of (Aguilar & Vlosky, 2007;…”
• Consumers’ Attitudes towards Organic Products and Sustainable Development: A Case Study of Romania (2017, background): “Nevertheless, there are also some important barriers in purchasing organic food, such as the premium prices compared to conventional food prices [3,20,28,29,32,33,48], lack of trust in product certification [49], awareness [34,50] and lack of availability [3,34,49,51], which, for Danish consumers, i”
• Organic Food Consumption: The Relevance of the Health Attribute (2020, background): “, [10,12]), to the best of our knowledge, the relative importance of organic food attributes to determine consumers’ preferences and WTP has received scant attention.”