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Demand for organic food in Switzerland
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The aim of this dissertation is to better understand the functioning of the organic food market in Switzerland. Over the last three decades the market for organic food in Switzerland has developed positively and continues to grow steadily. Understanding what drives and hinders consumption is crucial for those producing and marketing organic food as well as for agricultural policy makers.
This dissertation sheds light on the demand for organic food for the years 2006 to 2011 from different perspectives and identifies factors affecting purchase decisions. In the second chapter, product characteristics that are of importance to organic food consumers are identified. Accordingly, unprocessed products that have been produced in Switzerland have an advantage on the market. It is also shown that the price is an important criterion since consumers compare organic food with their conventional counterpart rather than with other organic alternatives.
The third chapter investigates the connection between culture and organic food consumption. This relationship was thus far addressed by comparing linguistic groups from different countries with one another. By comparing language groups of the same country within the framework of this dissertation, the influence of culture can be assessed more accurately than has been done in previous studies as large institutional differences do not apply. Some of the socio-demographic influencing factors that have already been identified in the past can be confirmed. The influence of culture is, however, the largest. Hence, a Röstigraben between German- and French-speaking Switzerland regarding organic food exists.
The final chapter of this dissertation explores the effect of income and prices on organic food consumption. Thereby, different approaches for the estimation of demand elasticities are compared. As demand elasticities are an important part of computable equilibrium models used to predict the impact of agricultural policies, the methodology for the elasticity estimation must be chosen with care. To investigate the influence of the methodological approach on the outcome of the elasticity estimation, five versions of the Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS) are compared. The study reveals a shortcoming of the widely-used consistent two-step estimation of the quadratic AIDS (QUAIDS) model and the approach of Shonkwiler and Yen (1999): the non-fulfilment of the homogeneity of the elasticities. Hence, the two-step estimation procedure does not comply with the initially imposed conditions of demand theory. The non-fulfilment is addressed by reformulating the QUAIDS model. This refined model does not fully comply with the conditions of demand theory but is the so far best possible solution when the approach of Shonkwiler and Yen (1999) and the QUAIDS model are combined.
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... Culture is largely seen as country-bound but even within countries there exist various sub-cultures. To further demonstrate the influence a culture can, have, Götze (2019) found that people in the German speaking region of Switzerland are more inclined to consume organic food than their French speaking counterparts. Furthermore, there were little differences found between the French speaking region and the Italian speaking part of Switzerland. ...
... Although this does not mean that there might not exist differences between French regions in terms of values, perceptions and behaviours or even within regions among various cultural groups. Furthermore, in the same study it was demonstrated that among all regions in Switzerland urban households are more likely to purchase organic products than those living in rural locations (Götze, 2019). ...
This research paper explores French consumer behaviour towards organic food with a particular focus on Brittany. The paper evaluates the demand towards these types of products as well as understanding the main motives for organic food consumption. The research question investigates: 'What are the main drivers in consumer behaviour that influence organic food consumption in Brittany?' This research contributes to the current body of literature by providing up-to-date information with a focus on a specific demographic area that is relevant in the organic food industry in Europe. The results are based on primary research, by conducting a survey among French consumers. Drivers that have the most strength in predicting organic consumption behaviour in Brittany are health benefits, absence of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), environmental impact and price. Variables that have a relatively weak influence are certification warranties, natural appearance of the product and availability. The study provides insight into this growing industry and forms a basis for further research.
Sales of organic milk in mainstream supermarkets have grown over the last 8 years, reaching $75.7 million in 1999, as more organic milk processors enter the market and more mainstream supermarkets sell organic products. National-level scanner data for mainstream supermarkets are employed to assess market shares and price premiums, as well as to estimate key demand elasticities. Container size is important in analyzing market shares for organics. Half-gallon containers are the principle organic market with volume shares ranging from 1.6% to 2.8% in 1999. Market shares for quarts and gallons of organic milk are considerably below 0.5%. Price premiums for organic milk averaged 60% of branded prices and 75% of private-label prices during the study period (November 1996-December 1999). Own-price elasticities suggest considerable response to lower organic prices, although the magnitude of this response declines as expenditure shares increase in later months. Cross-price elasticities indicate that organic and branded milks are usually substitutes but with considerable asymmetry in responses; branded prices affect organic purchases much more than the converse. Expenditure elasticities for organic milk imply that as milk expenditures decline, quantities purchased of organic milk will increase. Jointly, the elasticities suggest considerable response to changing retail prices.
In much of the Amazon Basin, approximately 70% of the population lives in urban areas and urbanward migration continues. Based on data collected over more than a decade in two long-settled regions of Amazonia, we find that rural-urban migration in the region is an extended and complex process. Like recent rural-urban migrants worldwide, Amazonian migrants, although they may be counted as urban residents, are often not absent from rural areas but remain members of multi-sited households and continue to participate in rural-urban networks and in rural land-use decisions. Our research indicates that, despite their general poverty, these migrants have affected urban markets for both food and construction materials. We present two cases: that of açaí palm fruit in the estuary of the Amazon and of cheap construction timbers in the Peruvian Amazon. We find that many new Amazonian rural-urban migrants have maintained some important rural patterns of both consumption and knowledge. Through their consumer behavior, they are affecting the areal extent of forests; in the two floodplain regions discussed, tree cover is increasing. We also find changes in forest composition, reflecting the persistence of rural consumption patterns in cities resulting in increased demand for and production of açaí and cheap timber species.
In this study, we estimated the influence of different meat prices, socio-demographic and geographic variables on sheep and goat meat demand using the Swiss household expenditure survey from 2000 to 2005, a micro data set on 20,940 households resident in Switzerland. This study is motivated by the fact that sheep and goats play a major economic role especially for small farms in Swiss agriculture and contribute to conservation of landscape and biodiversity especially in the mountain regions. Considering the high share of households with zero consumption for sheep and goat meat, we estimated a Tobit-model. Missing prices are replaced by monthly, regional market prices where possible, or by quality adjusted prices based on unit values. Our results show that pork is a substitute for sheep and goat meat, whereas beef is a complementary good, and that socio-demographic variables like education or the presence of children and geographic variables are important in determining demand of sheep and goat meat.
Despite their ethical intentions, ethically minded consumers rarely purchase ethical products (Auger and Devinney: 2007, Journal of Business Ethics
76, 361–383). This intentions–behaviour gap is important to researchers and industry, yet poorly understood (Belk et al.: 2005, Consumption, Markets and Culture
8(3), 275–289). In order to push the understanding of ethical consumption forward, we draw on what is known about the intention–behaviour
gap from the social psychology and consumer behaviour literatures and apply these insights to ethical consumerism. We bring
together three separate insights – implementation intentions (Gollwitzer: 1999, American Psychologist
54(7), 493–503), actual behavioural control (ABC) (Ajzen and Madden: 1986, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology
22, 453–474; Sheeran et al.: 2003, Journal of Social Psychology, 42, 393–410) and situational context (SC) (Belk: 1975, Journal of Consumer Research
2, 157–164) – to construct an integrated, holistic conceptual model of the intention–behaviour gap of ethically minded consumers.
This holistic conceptual model addresses significant limitations within the ethical consumerism literature, and moves the
understanding of ethical consumer behaviour forward. Further, the operationalisation of this model offers insight and strategic
direction for marketing managers attempting to bridge the intention–behaviour gap of the ethically minded consumer.
Keywordsactual behavioural control-consumer ethics-ethical consumerism-implementation intentions-intention–behaviour gap-perceived behavioural control-situational context-theory of planned behaviour-word–deed gap
This contribution determines the relevance of ethical attributes of organic food exceeding the EU regulation on organic farming for consumers’ purchase decisions. The information acquisition behaviour of consumers regarding additional ethical values of organic food was analysed by means of an Information-Display-Matrix (IDM) und an accompanying consumer survey in five European countries. Seven ethical attributes were tested of which ‘animal welfare’, ‘regional production’ and ‘fair prices for farmers’ were identified to be most important. Consumers showed an increased willingness to pay for organic food with these additional ethical attributes. Thus, producers of organic food should increasingly focus on additional ethical attributes such as ‘animal welfare’, ‘local production’ and ‘fair prices for farmers’ in production and communication with consumers. With respect to the methodology used, the IDM turned out to be helpful in reducing the problem of social desirability of answers.
Using a double hurdle model on panel data from 3,200 Danish households (monthly observations for 2002–2007), we study the effects of health-related media information on the demand for organic fruit and vegetables. We find that “negative” information about pesticides contained in conventional fruit and vegetables mainly influences the probability of a consumer entering the organic market, not the quantities consumed by households that are already active on the organic market. “Positive” information that links health and the consumption of organic food influences both steps of the decision process. Our dataset includes information about consumers’ media habits, which allows us to disentangle the direct effects of media information from the indirect effects of this information as it is disseminated through the population. Our results suggest that directly obtained information is the main type of information influencing consumers, while information loadings by dissemination through the population have almost no effect on consumption.
The growth in organic and local foods consumption has been examined using two different approaches to identify characteristics and motivations of food shoppers: market segmentation and economic models using multivariate analysis. The former approach, based on Means-end Chain theory, examines how intrinsic characteristics of foods affect food choices. The latter microeconomic approach examines economic constraints and extrinsic factors. This study demonstrates value in combining the two approaches to generate better empirical predictions of who buys organic and local food. It also supports a broader theoretical framework to explain behavior in terms of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. Using US data, an adaptation of the Food Related Lifestyle model yields four consumer lifestyles segmented by intrinsic motivations related to food. Each consumer segment exhibits distinct organic and local foods consumption behaviors. A multinomial logit model is estimated to examine the probability of being in one of these four groups as a function of extrinsic variables and economic constraints. In support of Alphabet theory and Regulatory Focus theory, we find that inclusion of extrinsic factors improves prediction of behavior and the ability to explain why they buy organic and local foods. The extrinsic variables that significantly increase the probability of being in a particular consumer food lifestyle segment include: environmental concerns, health practices, race, the presence of a farmers’ market, and to a lesser degree, family composition and income. We also find regulatory focus is most pronounced among the most active organic and local food shoppers.
