Literature Review

Consumer’s Perception and Purchase Intentions
Towards Organic Food Products:

Christ University Institute of Management

Team Members:
Chintan Desai
Amal Rajvanshi
Kardani Savan
Lovneesh Singh
Sarmistha Ghosh

1. INTRODUCTION

According to Wier and Calverley (2002), consumer interest in organic food products has grown tremendously in many industrialized countries during the past ten years. It is observed that the organic food products is also one of the fastest growing areas of the food market in Europe, Northern America, Australia and Japan with sales being in excess of $114.5 billion in 1999 (Makatouni, 2002).

Today, organic consumption is closely associated not only with health concerns, but also with social, economic and ecological sustainability. Agricultural and food industry experts agree that the peak of the organic food products trend has not yet been reached and there is still plenty of international growth potential in the organic market (Ebrahimi, 2007).

A survey by The Nielson Company in 2005 showed that more than 60 per cent of Singaporean claimed to consume organic food products and the majority cited personal health as their main motivation (The Straits Times (Singapore), November 21, 2007).

According to Schlegelmilch, Bohlen and Diamantopoulos (1996), socio-demographics have been the most widely used variable for profiling purposes due to the relative ease where it can be measured and applied. This is supported by Bagozzi, et al. (1998) where he agreed that demographic variables; age, gender, household income and family size are commonly used by marketers to segment market. Furthermore, they are standard and readily available and marketers believe that consumer behaviours are highly related to these variables (as cited in Greenwell, Fink and Pastone, 2002, p.233).

An analysis of literature suggests that, among psychographic variables, concern about health, food safety, impact on the environment and animal welfare as the

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