Title: Consumption of organic food products: an emerging market perspective

Authors: Neena Sondhi

Addresses: International Management Institute, B-10 Qutub Institutional Area, New Delhi, India

Abstract: The study was conducted by using a well-structured survey instrument designed to measure attitude, lifestyle and buying patterns of lead organic consumers. Non-probability convenience sampling approach was used to arrive at a total sample of 358 organic consumers. Exploratory factor analysis of the attitudinal and lifestyle related variables under study revealed the existence of five distinct factors. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient for the factors ranged from 0.63 to 0.857. Based on the grouped variables, the five factors were named as: health consciousness: cognitive component; health consciousness: behavioural component; environmental concerns; health over price and normative influence. The saved factors were then used to arrive at a three-cluster solution, namely, socially concerned; health conscious and environmental concerned consumer segments. Further the cluster analysis was validated through a discriminant analysis with 99.4% accuracy. Occupation, marital status and education had a significant association with the segment composition.

Keywords: organic food products; emerging markets; multiple discriminant analysis; market segmentation; cluster analysis; attribute based perceptual map; food consumption; consumer attitudes; lifestyles; buying patterns; health consciousness; environmental concerns; social concerns; occupation; marital status; education level.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMP.2017.080648

International Journal of Management Practice, 2017 Vol.10 No.1, pp.30 - 48

Received: 29 Jan 2016
Accepted: 14 Mar 2016
Published online: 01 Dec 2016 *

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