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The food industry is a billion dollar industry that sees fastchanges in its consumer behavior patterns frequently. Indeed, consumer’s food habits are very elastic and easily influenced by external stimuli such as trends or lifestyles such as veganism, vegetarianism, pescetarianism... An interesting subcategory of the food industry is the organic food consumption which is subject to many consumer behavior gaps and unexplained incongruities. Indeed, organic food may seem to be the most reasonable dietary choice to consumers due to its unrivaled health and environmental attributes, yet, studies have proven that most consumers with positive attitudinal responses toward organic food somehow still fail to convert their positive attitude in actual purchases in organic markets. In other words, there is an attitudetobehavior gap which seems to take its roots from a valuestoaction gap. Understanding better consumers’ organic behavior, consumption, and the gap between attitude and behavior is the objective of this research project. Therefore, to better understand this consumer’s attitudetobehavior gap, our research will be articulated around three hypotheses, each taking into account a different influential factor that could explain the dissonance between positive attitudinal responses and failure to purchase organic products. Our three independent variables are pricing, health consciousness, and environmental consciousness, as potential factors influencing consumers in their purchase behavior toward organic products.
TERM PROJECT CONSUMER BEHAVIOR TOWARDS ORGANIC FOOD TEAM D Rachel Billings Anh Vu Christina Sarah Maher Carla Casano Consumer & Organization Buying Behavior Summer Professor Ray TABLE OF CONTENT I Executive Summary A Research objectives 2 B Statement of methodology C Brief summary of the findings II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X I Literature Review A Attitude vs Purchase behaviors as experienced dissonance: The Roles of Knowledge and Consumer Orientations in Organic Markets B The Predictors of Consumer Behavior in Relation to Organic Food in the Context of Food Safety Incidents C Education as a factor of awareness development of organic product consumers D Pricing E Consumer acceptance toward organic foods; Environmental awareness F Consumer behavior and purchase intention for organic food; Health concern Hypotheses Research methodology A Type of study B Intent of study C Definition of population D Sample design and technique E Data collection and method F Questionnaire Findings A General attitude toward organic food B Pricing as a factor over organic food shopping behavior C Health consciousness as a factor over organic food shopping behavior 7 8 17 17 19 20 D Environmental impact as a factor over organic food shopping behavior 21 E A note on our demographic findings 21 Managerial implications Limitations Conclusion and recommendations Appendix Bibliography EXECUTIVE SUMMARY A RESEARCH OBJECTIVES The food industry is a billion dollar industry that sees fast-changes in its consumer behavior patterns frequently Indeed, consumer’s food habits are very elastic and easily influenced by external stimuli such as trends or lifestyles such as veganism, vegetarianism, pescetarianism An interesting subcategory of the food industry is the organic food consumption which is subject to many consumer behavior gaps and unexplained incongruities Indeed, organic food may seem to be the most reasonable dietary choice to consumers due to its unrivaled health and environmental attributes, yet, studies have proven that most consumers with positive attitudinal responses toward organic food somehow still fail to convert their positive attitude in actual purchases in organic markets In other words, there is an attitude-to-behavior gap which seems to take its roots from a values-to-action gap Understanding better consumers’ organic behavior, consumption, and the gap between attitude and behavior is the objective of this research project Therefore, to better understand this consumer’s attitude-to-behavior gap, our research will be articulated around three hypotheses, each taking into account a different influential factor that could explain the dissonance between positive attitudinal responses and failure to purchase organic products Our three independent variables are pricing, health consciousness, and environmental consciousness, as potential factors influencing consumers in their purchase behavior toward organic products B STATEMENT OF METHODOLOGY This research paper has been made possible and reliable thanks to two types of data: primary and secondary data Secondary data have been found on top journal articles that will be summarized later, in the “Literature review” part and referenced in a bibliography Primary data used in this research paper was collected through the administration of a Qualtrics survey to a population counting 120 participants The questionnaire was made of 32 questions divided into categories, on block for each variable: pricing as an influential factor toward consumer’s shopping behavior for organic food, health consciousness as an influential factor toward consumer’s shopping behavior for organic food, environmental consciousness as an influential factor toward consumer’s shopping behavior for organic food The first category introduces the survey with general questions to measure general consumer behavior attitude and habits toward organic food The last category gathers demographic questions C BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE FINDINGS Throughout this research and survey insights, a pattern has been identified: Consumers value organic food in high regard especially when they are being driven by health conscious motivations, however they end up not converting their positive attitudinal responses into purchases This we uncovered throughout our research is mainly due to the price point of organic food as well as consumers attitudes towards the organic food market Consumers have become skeptical towards the perceived benefits of organic food and the industry processes ultimately because of a lock of knowledge about the organic food industry as a whole II LITERATURE REVIEW A Attitude vs Purchase behaviors as experienced dissonance: The Roles of Knowledge and Consumer Orientations in Organic Markets Attitudes toward organic products appear to differ from purchase behavior in the organic food market This article suggests that if consumers had more knowledge about the benefits and attributes of organic food, it would improve the congruity between their positive attitudes and their purchase behaviors toward organic products Moreover, an interaction effect would arise between consumer’s improved knowledge of organic food’s benefits and their hedonic orientation In other words, increasing knowledge mitigates the difference between attitudes and purchase behaviors Therefore, this article considers the potential effects of environmental consciousness, health and hedonic orientations, together with consumer knowledge about organic products As mondial society gets more and more aware of the importance of sustainability, the organic food industry has significantly grown over the last 10 years Along with this growing social interest and fast sales expansions, academic research about organic products has increased too Most of these academic studies emphasize on motivations or consumer orientations related to health and environmental protection, as well as social or altruistic values and hedonic values Among the different negative factors influencing consumers in their organic product consumption, we find studies of price, consumer confidence, and ineffective marketing Conversely, the recurring positive factors are environmental protection, health, social/altruistic values and hedonic/self-benefiting values Sustainable consumption and healthy diets remain top priorities amongst modern consumers, yet an attitude-to-behavior gap can be observed, such that consumers express environmental and health concerns, but those concerns not translate into purchase behavior However, according to experts Akehurst et Al (2012), this gap is less significant for consumers with strong ecological consciousness B The Predictors of Consumer Behavior in Relation to Organic Food in the Context of Food Safety Incidents According to Liu and Yang (2019), the rapid development of the organic market has happened due to the fact that people started concerning themselves for their health, environmental protection and safety Food demand is increasing every day, especially clean and healthy food The global sale of the organic market has increased from $72 billion in 2013 to US $81.6 billion in 2015 (Willer & Lernoud, 2015; Willer & Lernoud, 2017) Organic food is currently the choice of many people living in urban areas, consumer behaviors in addition to price and quality, they are also interested in health issues and environmental concern (Ayuni & Rennie, 2012) A research by the US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health showed that health of their family and themselves are the priority (Resnik, 2007) Consumers who use organic food prefer products with natural processes, environmentally friendly and animal welfare and not use pesticides or fertilizers (Ayuni & Rennie, 2012) Researchers relied on many factors that influence consumers' beliefs on organic products They acknowledged that existing organic buyers believed these foods are healthier, tastier, fresher and more environmentally friendly than conventional foods (Liu & Yang, 2019; Ayuni & Rennie, 2012) However, with non-organic buyers, their willingness to buy organic food remains unclear and has not yet been well studied Some of their main concerns are prices (Ayuni & Rennie, 2012) Price is the sum of all values that a customer must pay in order to enjoy the benefits of owning or using a product It has been a major factor influencing buyers' choices (Kotler & Keller, 2016) And with the additional charge on organic food compared with the price of conventional food, price is still a big barrier between consumers and organic products (Ayuni & Rennie, 2012) In addition, consumers’ decision makings are influenced by their beliefs and values If consumers have almost no access to the knowledge of belief, the products are still not enough credibility to attract consumers Liu and Yang also stated that the lack of knowledge on organic food has been a reason for the inconsistency between their attitudes toward organic products and their buying behaviors (2012) To fully understand consumers’ behaviors toward organic food and reasons why consumers and not buy it, our team developed the research which focuses on the gap between the positive attitudinal responses from consumers toward organic food and the current lack of purchase behavior in organic markets C Education as a factor of awareness development of organic product consumers Consumer awareness of organic food is the first stage in the process of boosting demand for this product (Briz & Ward, 2009) Understanding organic food also has a positive influence on attitudes and consumption behavior (Gracia & de Magistris, 2008) Some research has suggested that organic food cognition is a core factor in driving consumer behavior towards this market (Kumar, 2011; Aryal et al., 2009), so that lack of adequate awareness of organic food is still a barrier to consuming behavior Therefore, improving organic food awareness can be an essential factor in expanding organic food markets in many countries (Liu & Yang, 2019; Tomi & Duricaa, 2012) The above articles and researches on consumer perception of organic products just mentioned the current situation and are still incomplete, especially their demographics are very broad and over the international aspects In particular, there hasn't been a complete study of US consumer perceptions of organic foods From there, the research we set out will aim to fill the gap in research on awareness and factors affecting consumer perceptions of organic food in the US, city of New York particularly Factors influencing consumer perceptions of organic foods identified in previous studies include gender, age, education level, occupation, income, and product sources (Kumar, 2011; Briz & Ward, 2008) Based on the previous studies, in this research, we hypothesized that other important factors that may influence consumer perception of organic food include concern about price, health and environment D Pricing Factor Coming from a journal by Aschemann- Witzel and Zielke (2015), “Prices play a role in a consumers’ purchase behavior depending on factors such as economic background, price consciousness, and sensitivity, the trade- off between price and value, and willingness to pay (WTP) (Aertsens et al 2009) The journal goes on to say, “Furthermore, consumers may lack knowledge about prices of organic food and overestimate the price level Thus, inaccurate consumer and lack of information hinder purchases of organic food To fully understand why and under which conditions price is a barrier to purchasing more organic food, insight into customers WTP and their reactions to price changes is necessary (Witzel and Zielke 2015) This goes to show that many people are misinformed regarding the correct pricing of organic food, which could be the cause of lack of purchases E Consumer acceptance towards organic foods; Environmental Awareness Environmental care is one of the main motivational factors towards purchasing any product according to literature review from authors such as Basha,et.al (2015) This consumer interest in environmental awareness has increased globally, as the research conducted by Basha,et al, details that there has been significant changes in the attitude of consumers towards food safety, environmental concern and organic food products (2015) Basha,et al (2015) makes a very thought provoking statement which implicates all current and future research papers which is that consumers will generally act based on the knowledge they perceive This in turn declares that knowledge has the power to change the consumer perception to either positive or negative attitude Therefore the findings from Basha and authors (2015) research indicates that consumer behavior is changing towards purchase of many environmentally-friendly and organic products They found that this is due to the fact that consumers have more awareness of environmental degradation and the related issues This current paper will hope to further understand if these findings still exist amongst consumers today F Consumer behavior and purchase intention for organic food; Health Concern This literature paper conducted by Rana and Paul states that health-conscious consumers show a growing preference for organic food over conventionally grown food (2017) A key finding from the paper explains that the presence of packaged food labels which carry nutritional information and health claims strongly influences the attitude toward products with detailed label descriptions and nutrition information (Rana & Paul, 2017) Health consciousness has been proven to strongly motivate consumers to purchase organic food according to Rana and Paul (2017) The authors of this paper discovered through their findings that the health factor creates a positive attitude about organic food consumption as a way to prevent diseases The conclusion of the findings from this paper detailed that health consciousness forms the basis for purchase intention for many consumers and it is positively associated with the consumer buying behavior and attitude (Rana & Paul, 2017) This research paper will expand further on Rana and Paul’s findings on consumers purchasing behaviors being positively affected by consumers' cogniance of health 10 Thus, confirming the first hypothesis of this research project, New York State’s consumers belonging to the age range 18-35 years have positive attitudinal responses toward organic food but will only purchase when there is a price discount Indeed, as the previous questions prove, consumers think that organic food is too expensive compared to nonorganic food and admitted that if the prices were lower, they would switch their shopping habits from nonorganic to organic products C Health consciousness as a factor over organic food shopping behavior As far as this survey is concerned, health consciousness definitely seems to be the main motivation for consumers to buy organic food Indeed, to the question “Why you buy/eat organic food? Please, select all that applies”, 92% of the respondents selected the answer “for its health attributes” In addition, when asked to rank organic food attributes in a descending order of importance, “organic food as a healthy choice” always comes first Additionally, 73% of respondents said they consider themselves mostly (64) to very (24) health conscious, against only 35% respondents ranking from not health conscious at all (1), to slightly health conscious (18), to either health conscious nor unconscious (16) Finally, when asked “how often you reflect and wish to improve your health habits”, 64% of the population ranked from “most of the time” (40) to “always” (37) against only 22% of them ranking from never (2) to sometimes (24) Conducting SPSS deeper analysis, we ran a correlation analysis between survey responses about respondents’ likeliness to buy organic food in general, and their responses about health related questions (appendix 3), we can observe that correlation is significant 29 between respondent’s level of health consciousness and their willingness to buy organic food Thus, confirming H2, we can confirm that consumers with a high level of health concern are the consumers with the higher level of likelihood to buy organic food D Environmental impact as a factor over organic food shopping behavior If health consciousness can definitely be considered as the winning reason why people buy - or consider buying - organic food, environmental consciousness seems to remain important for respondents For example, to the question “Why you buy/eat organic food? Please, select all that applies”, 44% of the respondents selected the answer “for its environmental attributes” Moreover, to the question “how often you reflect on environmental issues and wish to improve your environmental impact?”, the answers were extremely varied, but a positive pattern was still noticeable The results show that 49% of the population ranked between “most of the time” (33), and always (16), while another 28% answered they were questioning their environmental impact half of the time, and 30% ranked from never (5) to sometimes (32) To consolidate these insights, 52.5% of respondents consider themselves mostly (56) to very (7) environmentally conscious, against 25% of respondents considering themselves slightly (29) to not (1) environmentally conscious Another 22.5% of the population answered by neutrality When focusing on the benefits of organic food on the environment, the results were, once again, varied: 36% of respondents consider it is important (38) or very important (6) for them to take the environment into account when buying food, 49% of them consider it moderately important, and 14% of them consider it as a unimportant factor 30 Conducting SPSS deeper analysis, we ran a correlation analysis between survey responses about respondents’ likeliness to buy organic food in general, and their responses about environmental related questions (appendix 4), we can observe significance in correlation, however the significance remains less important than the correlation between consumers willingness to buy organic food and their health consciousness Thus, answering H3, we can affirm that consumers’ environmental consciousness does play a role in their purchase behavior of organic food, however it is not the main decision making factor E ● A note about our demographic findings Out of our 120 respondents, 77 of them were females, representing 64% of the population, against 37 males, representing 31% of the population Finally, one respondent prefered not communicating his/her gender ● In terms of education level, our population went from respondent with a high school diploma to respondents with doctoral degrees Out of the sample size of 120 respondents, the two biggest educational groups are 59 respondents with a college bachelor degree, representing 49% of the population; and 32 respondents with a master’s degree, representing 27% of the total population ● In terms of yearly income before taxes, most of our population (40%) households make between $30,000 and $69,999, and another 30% makes under $29,000 The last 31 respondents ranked between $70,000 to $99.999 (1%) and over $100,000 (16%) ● Conducting SPSS deeper analysis, we ran a correlation analysis between survey 31 responses about respondents’ likelihood to buy organic food in general, and their responses about marital status related questions and peer pressure related questions (appendix 5), we can observe that the significance level is very low Therefore, we can affirm that peer pressure doesn’t play an important role in influencing consumers to buy organic food VI MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS As discussed previously our study provides numerous insights that may be valuable for marketers or producers of organic produce to better advertise to consumers According to our SPSS findings, it is apparent that health consciousness is the main reason for the purchase of organic foods, while pricing is the main reason for lack of purchase when it comes to organic foods This leaves environmental awareness in a gray area- not being significant enough within our population to influence consumers’ attitude toward purchase In response to these findings, education regarding the environment is clearly needed in order for consumers’ to act on purchasing organic foods on behalf of the environment On top of education providing environmental awareness, it’s important for food companies to be fully honest when it comes to the quality of products they are selling If the labels and packaging were more direct and honest regarding the ingredients used/ and or how the food was made, consumers may be more likely to purchase organic foods This is because 32 they will have more knowledge on what it is they are buying To detail further we uncovered that consumers not always believe the packaging of organic foods to be true As stated previously by a respondent they believe organic to be a “buzzword” and therefore the implications of this is that consumers are not fully informed on the industry It is up to the producers and marketers of organic produce to clearly inform consumers about the benefits of organic foods over non organic foods in order to encourage them to believe in the products and in turn be converted to purchasing organic food over non organic An opportunity for future study would be to test how labels can influence the purchase of organic products VII LIMITATIONS One limitation detected throughout our study, is the idea that our subjects were willing to over exaggerate their truth in answering the questions, based on aiming to please the experimenters Because 83% of our population admitted that buying organic food is an overall good choice, they most likely wanted to be “good subjects” by stating that they actively care about the environment and their health more than they really This could have given us a response bias Another limitation found in the survey was the lack of answers from every subject Some answers were skipped by certain subjects, allowing us to believe that maybe they completed it too quickly and didn’t actually take the time to understand what they were reading Our open-ended question was not answered by the majority of respondents with only 19 responses, therefore we may have missed out on other potential influential responses and should have made the question mandatory for all participants Future studies could look at 33 additional mandatory questions to pose to participants to investigate supplementary factors influencing their decisions to purchase organic produce in comparison to non organic VIII CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS Most respondents are aware of the benefits of organic food Consumer concerns about packaging, display on the products as well consumer assessments of the food play an important role in organic food perception Besides, the effect of education and age is directly proportional to perceptions of organic produce These results provide important policy implications for organic food awareness, to the environment or consumers' health, thereby contributing to the growth of the organic product market in New York First of all, there is a need to raise consumer awareness regarding food safety in general Second, there is a need to provide consumers with more complete, specific and clear information about organic food benefits and attributes so that they fully understand the health and environmental benefits, features and related information of organic products Organic products marketers need to ensure its distinctive labeling will help convince consumers to believe in the quality and benefits of the products, as much as possible, health and environmental attributes have to be listed on the product’s packaging In addition to traditional communication channels such as television and radio, and digital marketing like social media and search engine optimisation, promotion through word of month and personal relationships, such as family, relatives, and people with high education and status in society like doctors, teachers, influencers, can pass on to others about the positive information and effective effect of organic products Finally, we can expect an increase in organic food 34 consumption if organic food price decreases or is subject to discounts IX APPENDIX A Appendix - Likelihood to buy organic food and organic food correlation 35 36 B Appendix - Likelihood to buy organic food and income level correlation 37 C Appendix - Likelihood to buy organic food and health consciousness correlation 38 D Appendix - Likelihood to buy organic food and environmental consciousness correlation 39 40 E Likelihood to buy organic food and marital status and peer pressure related questions 41 X BIBLIOGRAPHY Aryal, K.P., P Chaudhary, S Pandit and G.Sharma (2009) Consumers’ willingness to pay for organic products: A case from Kathmandu Valley The Journal of Agriculture and Environment, 10 Ayuni, F., Rennie, D (2012) Consumer Perceptions Towards Organic Food Briz, T and R.W Ward (2009) Consumer awareness of organic products in Spain: An application of multinomial logit models Food Policy, 34(3) Basha, M.,Mason,C.,Shamsudin,M.,Hussain,H.,Salem,A.,Ali,A (2015) Consumer Acceptance Towards Organic Food Global Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences Gil, J M., A Gracia and M Sánchez (2000) Market segmentation and willingness to pay for organic products in Spain International Food and Agribusiness Management Review Hidalgo-Baz, Maria., Martos-Partal Mercedes., Gonzalez-Benito, Oscar (2017) Attitude vs Purchase Behaviors as Experienced Dissonance: The Roles of Knowledge and Consumer Orientations in Organic Market Frontiers Kareklas, I., Carlson, J R., and Muehling, D D (2014) “I eat organic for my benefit and yours”: egoistic and altruistic considerations for purchasing organic food and their implications for advertising strategists Journal of Advertising 43, 18–32 Kumar, S (2011) Analyzing the Factors Affecting Consumer Awareness on Organic Foods in India Presentation at 21st Annual IFAMA World Forum and Symposium on the Road to 42 2050: Sustainability and Business Opportunities, Frankfurt, German, 2011 Rana, J & Paul, J (2017) Consumer behavior and purchase intention for organic food: A review and research agenda Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services Resnik DB (2007) Responsibility for health: personal, social, and environmental Journal of Medical Ethics Tomić, G ., Đuricaa, M ., & Đokić, N (2012) Education as a factor of awareness development of organic product consumers Applied Studies in Agribusiness and Commerce Willer, H., and Lernoud, J (2017) The World of organic agriculture Statistics and Emerging Trends Bonn: FIBL & IFOAM – Organics International 43 ... between attitude and behavior is the objective of this research project Therefore, to better understand this consumer’s attitude-to-behavior gap, our research will be articulated around three hypotheses,... consumers in their purchase behavior toward organic products B STATEMENT OF METHODOLOGY This research paper has been made possible and reliable thanks to two types of data: primary and secondary... in the “Literature review” part and referenced in a bibliography Primary data used in this research paper was collected through the administration of a Qualtrics survey to a population counting