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BFJ
112,8 Factors influencing organic
food purchase in India – expert
survey insights
902
Somnath Chakrabarti
Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad, India
Abstract
Purpose – The paper aims to document the findings of an expert survey in the organic food category
in India. It seeks to highlight the relative importance attached by the experts to key explanatory
variables in the consumers’ purchase process of organic food. It attempts to integrate with the relevant
consumer survey findings published in India in recent times in organic food category.
Design/methodology/approach – The list of experts was prepared by including regular and
well-known speakers in different agri enclaves and summits and who are members of different food
industry bodies. Experts were contacted through judgmental sampling method. Feedback on the
expert questionnaires was collected from July to October 2007 from 33 highly knowledgeable senior
experts primarily through face-to-face personal surveys and through e-mail surveys.
Findings – Importance placed on health motivation has the highest average rating and is one of the
lowest standard deviations among the explanatory variables in the expert survey. Experts also rate
the importance of the three mentioned attitudes (about conviction about utility of organic food,
reputation of store and certification process-related information), organic food-specific consumer
innovativeness, organic food-specific consumer opinion leadership, word of mouth (WOM) (activity),
WOM (praise) and affective commitment about the store to be high in the consumers’ purchase
process.
Originality/value – The novelty of the paper lies in the fact that it addresses the key issues facing
the organic food category in India from an expert survey point of view.
Keywords Organic foods, Buying behaviour, India
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Consumers worldwide are becoming increasingly concerned about nutrition, health
and the quality of their food (Gil et al., 2000). One of the key ways that environment and
health consciousness is getting reflected is through consumers’ increased interest in
organic food (von Alvensleben, 1998). More than 140 countries are now producing
certified organic food with 32.2 million hectares of agricultural land being managed
organically globally by more than 1.2 million producers (Willer and Kilcher, 2009).
Global sales of organic products have reached US $46.1 billion in 2007 (Willer and
Kilcher, 2009).
Schlegelmilch et al. (1996) indicate that the increase in environmental consciousness
has had profound impact on consumer behavior whereby the green product is
expanding at a fast pace. Organic food markets are evolving at markedly different
British Food Journal rates. Fotopoulos and Krystallis (2002) indicate that Greek organic market although
Vol. 112 No. 8, 2010
pp. 902-915
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0007-070X
The author has benefitted from the valuable suggestions of Professor Rajat K. Baisya, Professor
DOI 10.1108/00070701011067497 of Marketing and Strategic Management, Department of Management Studies, IIT Delhi, India.
more mature than earlier is still lagging a decade behind the rest of the developed Organic food
organic markets. In the same vein, British and German markets have developed at purchase
different pace though consumers there appear to hold very similar attitudes and beliefs
regarding organic foods (Baker et al., 2004). This necessitates the need to study key in India
aspects of organic food purchase in an emerging market like India given that about
one-third of world’s organically managed land is in developing countries (Willer and
Kilcher, 2009). 903
India is one of the countries with the largest area under organic management along
with Argentina, Brazil, China and Uruguay (Willer and Kilcher, 2009). The size of
organic agricultural land has reached 1.03 million hectares in India in 2007, of which
455,568 hectares are fully converted and the rest is under conversion (Menon, 2009).
Local markets have taken off in many of the big cities of south and eastern part of Asia,
and Delhi and Bangalore are some of the Indian cities which are witnessing enhanced
internal consumption of organic products (Willer and Kilcher, 2009). The domestic
market is driving organic production in India and 96.7 per cent of India’s 5,85,000 MT
of certified organic products produced in 2007-2008 is used in domestic markets.
An eight-city survey in 2006 has indicated a potential demand to the tune of INR
5.6 billion for organic products in India (Mukherjee, 2008).
Country-specific research indicates that Indians are amongst the top ten buyers of
foods with health supplements globally but lack access to organic food products
(ACNielsen, 2006). It highlights that Indians are keen to purchase organic food for their
children but the category suffers from poor availability and premium price perception.
Organic food market in India is still at a nascent stage, however, some research has been
carried out to understand buying behavior of organic food purchasers. Researchers in
Indian context have identified that relevant personality constructs and associated
dimensions and key purchase motivations and attitudes may be used effectively in
consumer survey to understand purchase behavior in an environment-friendly category
like organic food (Chakrabarti and Baisya, 2007, 2009).
The introduction section in this paper is followed by state-of-the-art (literature) and
conclusions for further surveys (gaps). The literature part is very compact and has been
confined to what is relevant for the focus of the survey with clear conclusions about what
is known and highlighting subsequently what are the deficits (gap) that justify the new
survey. This is followed by the discussion of the experimental part.
State-of-the-art literature
The brief literature review highlights below linkages between food category purchase
and different relevant variables in line with what has been explained in Chakrabarti
and Baisya (2007, 2009) papers in detail.
Gaps from consumer surveys and scope of the expert survey in India
There is lack of research in India on the expert opinion front about the relative
importance attached by the experts to the chosen metric explanatory variables in the
consumers’ purchase process of organic food. There is a need to carry out an expert
survey in the area that may attempt to integrate with the relevant consumer survey
findings (Chakrabarti and Baisya, 2007, 2009). This can be quite relevant for marketers
given India has one of the highest numbers of organic producers among all the
countries (Willer and Kilcher, 2009).
The correlation of importance attached to conviction of the consumer about the utility
of organic food with number of categories purchased is significant and positive for
occasional buyers (Chakrabarti and Baisya, 2007). Also, the rating for conviction about
utility of organic food is the strongest among the three mentioned attitudes considered
for both regular and occasional buyers (Chakrabarti and Baisya, 2007). Hence, there is a
need to understand in expert survey the ways marketers may create desirable level of
awareness among the consumers of this category.
As the number of categories purchased by regular buyers is highly correlated with
domain-specific innovativeness score, the main marketing effort of retailers should be
targeted at the innovators and early adopters of the category (Chakrabarti and Baisya,
2009). However, there is lack of an in-depth understanding about the focus areas for
marketers for targeting the innovators and opinion leaders of the category.
Also, consumer research has found that the affective commitment level of regular
buyers is higher than that of occasional buyers in a statistically significant manner and
BFJ this construct is the most important differentiator between the two groups of regular
112,8 and occasional buyers (Chakrabarti and Baisya, 2009). This indicates that marketers
have to develop a detailed understanding about antecedents of the affective
commitment of regular buyers though very little research is available internationally in
this area.
Perceived performance risk has been included as an important variable in the
906 consumer research for the organic food purchase in India (Chakrabarti and Baisya,
2009). Expert survey needs to focus on the importance of specific marketer action points
that can mitigate the perceived performance risk of consumers.
There is lack of expert survey about the parameters limiting more regular usage of
organic food and about the associated marketer action points. Hence, based on the
research gaps, this paper focuses on obtaining expert opinions in the category on:
.
understanding the relative importance attached to the chosen metric explanatory
variables (as identified in Chakrabarti and Baisya (2007, 2009) research) in the
consumers’ purchase process in organic food;
.
marketer action points for awareness generation among purchasers;
.
marketer action points for targeting innovators and opinion leaders;
.
marketer action points for creating affective commitment among regular buyers;
.
marketer action points for mitigating performance risk; and
.
understanding the factors constraining more regular usage in the category.
Conclusions
The expert survey in organic food category involving 33 senior and knowledgeable
experts from the agri and food industry delivers some new and significant information
for India. It helps to better understand consumers’ attitudes towards the purchase and
consumption of organic food. The findings are relevant for the future development of
organic food markets in India and can help to better position organic food products
among consumers. It highlights the relative importance attached by the experts to key
explanatory variables in the consumers’ purchase process of organic food. It has
attempted to integrate with the relevant recent consumer survey findings published in
India in the category.
Importance placed on health motivation has the highest average rating and one of the
lowest standard deviations. Experts view the importance of the three mentioned
attitudes (conviction, reputation and certification), organic food-specific consumer
innovativeness, organic food-specific consumer opinion leadership, WOM (activity),
WOM (praise) and affective commitment about the store from where purchase is
normally made to be high in the consumers’ purchase process. Opinion leadership gets
higher rating and lower standard deviation compared to the same for innovativeness in
expert survey.
The expert survey provides major action points for marketers in the areas of
awareness creation, targeting innovators and opinion leaders, finding out the
antecedents of affective commitment of regular buyers, mitigating perceived
performance risk and identifying factors constraining more regular usage in the
category.
The experts in the survey overwhelmingly agree about the need to create awareness
about the category in the market. Majority of experts in this research specifically cite
about health and nutrition platform when asked about the platform of awareness
creation. Majority of experts have also responded positively to the need to tap innovators
and opinion leaders in this category. Experts view that health advisors like doctors and
nutritionists may act as the professional opinion leaders for the category and they may
exert formal influences upon patients in WOM conversation.
The key marketer action points for creating affective commitment among regular
buyers include better price competitiveness with conventional food through
negotiation with farmers, personalized attention, regular availability, organic choices
in more food categories, keeping an exclusive section with prime display in diversified
food supermarkets and service reliability primarily through trained and
knowledgeable sales people.
The performance risk in the category can be addressed through the reliability-related
issues and the three major dimensions of reliability cited in this context are certification,
quality consistency of supply and dependability of regular supply. Experts think high Organic food
price and limited availability are primarily responsible in limiting more usage of organic purchase
food by regular buyers.
in India
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• Health --------
• Curiosity --------
• More nutritious --------
• Tastier --------
• Desire to protect the environment --------
• Need to look after unwell people in home --------
Very Important (VI), Important (I), Neither important nor unimportant (N),
Unimportant (U),Very Unimportant (VU)
• The conviction of the consumer about the utility of organic food ------
• The reputation of the store & its associated people from where purchase is considered ------
• The availability of organic food certification related information in the brand considered ------
• The importance of positive word of mouth communication from friends ------
• The importance of positive word of mouth communication from office colleagues ------
• The importance of positive word of mouth communication from family/relatives ------
• The importance of consumer’s organic food category specific innovativeness ------
• The importance of consumer’s organic food category specific opinion leadership ------
• The importance of WOM (Activity) towards the store from where organic food is generally
bought* ------
• The importance of WOM (Praise) towards the store from where organic food is generally bought
** ------
• The importance of affective commitment towards the store from where organic food is generally
bought ------
• The role of perceived financial risk ------
• The role of perceived performance risk ------
* mention to others quite frequently, told more people about this organic food store, seldom miss an
opportunity to tell others, tend to talk about this store in great detail
** have only good things to say about this organic food store, am proud to tell others that I use this
store
3. a) Is there a the need to create awareness about the category in the market?
Yes No
b) What should be the platform for awareness creation among buyers (pls. specify)
c) What are some of the important benefits within your mentioned awareness creation
platform (pls. specify)?
d) What are the major methods for creating awareness in the category (pls. specify)?
(continued)
4. a) Do you think there is a need to tap innovators and opinion leaders in this category? Organic food
Yes No purchase
in India
b) If so, pls. highlight marketer action points for specifically identifying and tapping
category innovators and opinion leaders more effectively (pls. specify)?
5. What should be focus areas for marketers for building affective commitment among 915
regular buyers of organic food (pls. specify)?
7. Please evaluate the role of the following constraints in limiting the more regular
purchase of organic food categories on a very unimportant (1) to very important (5) scale.
• High Price
• Limited Availability
• Any other factor (pls. mention)
Date: Place: