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Information System for Agriculture and Food Research

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Analysis of state of knowledge of consumer behavior in organic foods and nutrition with the inclusion of out-of-home-consumption

Project


Project code: 2810OE095
Contract period: 01.04.2011 - 15.12.2011
Budget: 42,038 Euro
Purpose of research: Inventory & Assessment

The study contains an extensive overview of the national and international consumer research for organic food. A total of 562 publications based on 338 research studies published between January 2000 and June 2011 was analysed and structured into seven research areas. The research studies in the areas ‘determinants of consumer behaviour’, ‘consumer segmentation’, ‘product policy’, ’price policy’, ‘communication’, ‘distribution’ and ‘out-of-home-consumption’ were evaluated according to their sampling procedure, their database and the methods of data analyses. Considering the relevant English- and German-speaking literature, the state of knowledge of marketing research for organic food has been examined enabling the identification of relevant research deficits for Germany. The results of the study reveal a high density of publications especially for the last four years. It has been found that ‘determinants of consumer behaviour’, ‘product policy’ as well as ’price policy’ belong to the most treated topics among all analysed publications. Nevertheless, there are still many aspects, which haven’t been in the focus of the ongoing research yet, such as sensory preferences of different consumer groups, ecologically friendly packaging as well as price knowledge and price psychology. Moreover, innovative aspects of trend research regarding organic food have been found. Other research fields such as ‘communication’, ‘distribution’ and ‘out-of-home-consumption’ have hardly been dealt with so far. In addition to the status-quo-analysis an online-survey and an expert-workshop were conducted, in order to evaluate the relevance of the identified research deficits and to determine the demand for research activities on part of practitioners and experts. This extensive analysis enabled the deduction of key aspects for future research in Germany.

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