Text

theses

The objective of this study is to focus on the consumer preference for purchasing organic food by assessing the consumer’s opinions toward organic processed food, the impact from different information sources on the consumer’s food purchasing habits, and to uncover the attributes influencing four groups of consumers with different characteristics. In this study, over 1,000 organic products consumers were surveyed in five states, namely, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. Main factors include family size, annual income, gender, age, education, primary occupation, awareness of food safety, purchasing frequency of organic products, and the category of most frequently consumed organic foods. Multiple econometric models were developed to conduct the consumer preference analysis.
According to the results, the respondents who view pesticide and herbicide residues as serious or somewhat hazardous are more likely to consume organic processed food but are highly unlikely to become frequent buyers. These differences might be related to consumers’ attitudes toward organic food prices, organic food varieties, and their demographic characteristics. By assessing how consumers gain knowledge of organic foods, the respondent’s age, income level, awareness of food safety and nutritional information, opinions toward organic products, and their willingness to purchase organic products show a significant impact on consumer preferences towards organic foods. We segmented the consumers by using principal component analysis into four groups as “Organic supporter”, “Direct channel buyer”, “Quality follower”, and “Thrifty domestic consumer”. The preliminary results indicate that among the four groups, the consumer’s characteristics and preferences, willingness to pay for the organic food price premium, opinions towards quality, and the product varieties that are available can significantly impact the purchasing decision for food products.
The information generated by this study is useful to provide producers with a framework for understanding the appeal and demand of the organic produce market. Through analyzing the consumer's profile, this research can help the market strategy of organic food producers and business planners to optimize the distribution channel, and therefore maximize the consumers' purchasing power of organic foods to expand the market.

ETD_9202

M.S.

Includes bibliographical references

by Tianxin Wu

doi:10.7282/t3-d334-0315

ETD graduate

The author owns the copyright to this work.