Consumer Buying Behaviour - A Conceptual Framework
Consumer Buying Behaviour - A Conceptual Framework
https://www.emerald.com/insight/1477-7835.htm
Abstract
Purpose – The paper aims to investigate existing research in factors impacting organic food purchase with
special reference to eco-labels and identify the relative influence of various determinants.
Design/methodology/approach – A conceptual framework is proposed of organic food buying behaviour
after analysing a sample of 154,072 consumers reported in 91 research studies from 2001–2020. The factors are
categorised into four categories on the basis of relatedness. In addition, the factors were analysed based on time,
region and national economic status.
Findings – The impact of consumer psychographics, socio-demographic and product-related factor categories
were found to be more pronounced compared to supply-related factor category. The results show that among
individual factors like health concern, environment concern, knowledge and awareness, eco-labels and price
followed by trust in organic food are the most important factors in organic food purchase. The findings suggest
that eco-labels increase trust in organic food by reducing information asymmetry in consumers. However, there
were differences in perception and factors importance between high-income economies and emerging
economies.
Originality/value – The study is unique, as it analyses secondary research based on criteria of high-income
economies and emerging economies. The conceptual framework can also be incorporated further into different
cognitive models like the theory of planned behaviour.
Keywords Organic food buying behaviour, Eco-labels, Organic food certification, High income economy,
Emerging economy
Paper type Conceptual paper
1. Introduction
Pollution and environmental issues, often as a result of economic growth, (Chen et al., 2017;
Narula and Desore, 2016) have led to a growing demand for eco-friendly or green products
(Teoh and Gaur, 2019; Chaudhary and Bisai, 2018; Narula and Desore, 2016; Desore and
Narula, 2018). To fulfil this, organisations and stakeholders are moving towards
sustainability to remain competitive by dovetailing their operations and products (Dubey
et al., 2016; Wang et al., 2018; Song, 2016; Martinez, 2012; Svensson and Wagner, 2015; Ozoliņa
and Rosa, 2013; Desore and Narula, 2018; Poddar et al., 2019). Purchase decisions are
influenced by social, economic, cultural and other factorial contexts (Joshi and Rahman, 2016).
The same has been witnessed in the food industry, where polluting conventional agriculture Management of Environmental
Quality: An International Journal
(Chen et al., 2018) is being replaced with sustainable agricultural practices (Chauhan et al., © Emerald Publishing Limited
1477-7835
2019; Narula, 2009) for producing environment-friendly products like organic food. DOI 10.1108/MEQ-01-2020-0014
MEQ Accordingly, the global organic food market witnessed a fivefold increase from 17.9bn
USD in 2000 to 114bn USD in 2018 (Schlatter et al., 2020). Though, the market is growing in all
regions of the world, yet the demand is concentrated in North America (45.2%) followed by
Europe (38.5%) (Schlatter et al., 2020). However, the average per capita expenditure on
organic food in the world remains only 12.8 USD (2018) (Schlatter et al., 2020).
Consumers are attracted to organic food because it is perceived to be safe, healthy and
environmental-friendly (Tran, 2017; Janssen, 2018; Dangi et al., 2020). Yet often this interest is
not translated into a purchase (Sch€aufele and Hamm, 2018; Sultan et al., 2019; Aitken et al.,
2020). This area offers an interesting opportunity for research in light of growing awareness
of organic food and relatively low purchase corresponding with it. The research objective of
this paper is to determine what are the factors that motivate consumers to purchase
organic food?
Different research has stressed that consumer attitudes are linked to buying intention and
behaviour (Aslihan Nasir and Karakaya, 2014; Sch€aufele and Hamm, 2018; Sultan et al., 2019)
with respect to organic products. Focus in most studies has been on the correlation between
corresponding attitude and behaviour for green food choices (Lockie et al., 2004; Tarkiainen
and Sundqvist, 2005; Tung et al., 2012; Zhou et al., 2013; Aslihan Nasir and Karakaya, 2014).
However, there are a few issues that need further deliberation, as there are inconsistencies
among different categories of factors like socio-demographic, consumer psychographics,
product and supply related that impact consumer behaviour, including ethical issues in
consumer attitude besides environmental and health issues (Nasir and Karakaya, 2014;
Sch€aufele and Hamm, 2018; Dangi et al., 2020).
This study develops a conceptual framework based on existing research on consumer
purchase behaviour for organic foods. Despite the existence of literature in this area, factors
leading to organic food consumption behaviour show limited understanding, which implies a
need to further, advance the research. Previous studies on existing research on organic food
have either focused on particular theory(s) (Scalco et al., 2017) or framework development
(Rana and Paul, 2017) or are meta-analytic (Scalco et al., 2017; Massey et al., 2018) in nature.
This study provides an overview of various factors associated with organic food
consumption and evaluates their relationship among themselves without restricting itself
to any theories. In addition, it includes the role of eco-labels (organic food certification labels)
which have either been barely covered (Rana and Paul, 2017) or not covered at all (Scalco et al.,
2017). Finally, based on analysis, it categorizes the factors and proposes a conceptual
framework. Thus, the study enhances the understanding of the existing literature and
addresses the aforementioned gaps in organic food buying behaviour.
2. Methodology
The paper is based on data collected through secondary literature sources related to organic
food consumption. To accomplish this study, different bibliographic databases such as
Science Direct, Google Scholar and Web of Science were searched using pre-defined keywords
such as “organic food consumption”, “organic food consumer buying behaviour and
intention”, “organic food labelling” published in the last 20 years (i.e., 2001–2020). We
identified a large number (<1,135) of potentially relevant publications including papers,
reports and other literature. Research on associated areas such as green consumption, fair
trade food, etc was not included. Book chapters, reports, thesis and unpublished manuscripts
were also excluded. Further shortlisting was done based on careful consideration and
selection. Only peer-reviewed journal articles in English were considered. Double entries or
studies with basic missing information were excluded. Publications in the last two decades
(2001–2020) were included, considering the growing market and popularity of the organic
food and the role of Internet technology in increasing awareness, knowledge and facilitating
its availability in this time period.
The manuscripts were examined through title and/or abstract and removed, unless it was Consumer’s
found relevant to the topic of interest or general approach. All research papers selected were behavioural
required to evaluate the intention to purchase or consume organic food (either generic or
specific). In addition, some studies were added manually by searching within the references of
intention of
the examined manuscripts obtained by the previous method. Based on the topic and quality organic food
screen, not all the examined manuscripts were relevant for the study. Thus, from 255
potential manuscripts, 91 research articles were included in this study. All research papers
were empirical (89) except two, one each for conceptual and case study.
Most of the publications considered used primary data except eight that were based on
secondary data. The total sample size of all the publications considered was 1,54,072 (primary
and secondary data). The mean and mode sample size were 1,711 and 442, respectively.
Primary data were mostly collected through survey (77%) whether face-to-face was or online,
using questionnaire (91.4%) and interview (9.4%). Focus groups were used by 5.4% of
research papers. The most common methods of data analysis were regression (linear, logistic
and hierarchical) (32%) and structural equation modelling (SEM) (23%). 9.8% of sources
conducted experiments, particularly food choice experiments. 54% of research papers were
from high-income economies (HIE) and 46% from emerging economies (EE).
3. Review of literature
The review of the selected publications about the different factors that impact the purchase of
organic food is presented below:
Figure 1.
Factor categories
across time
Important factors
Consumer’s
50 behavioural
45 intention of
40
35
organic food
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Figure 2.
----------Socio-Demographic------------- -----------------Product-related----------------- --Supply –related-- ----------Consumer Psychographics---------- Important factors
determined
Source(s): Created by authors
28
25
22 22
18 19
16 17 16
14 15 14
13
11 11 10
8 9
8 9 8 9
7 7
6 7 7
6 7 6
5 5 5
4 5
2 3
2 3 2 2 3
2
1 1 1 1
Figure 3.
Factors in high-income
economies (HIE) vs.
High income economies Emerging economies
emerging
economies (EE)
Source(s): Created by authors
Attitude
Socio-demographic
Psychographic
Subjective norms
Intention Behaviour
Product related
5. Theoretical implications
The proposed conceptual framework can be adapted or extended for future research in
organic food consumption with existing models like theory of planned behaviour (TPB). The
factor categories form the antecedents of the attitude, subjective norm and perceived
behavioural control of the TPB.
The findings suggest that high-income economies and emerging economies are more
likely to have similarities among themselves, irrespective of regions. This could be due to the
presence of more mature organic markets within high income economies compared to those in
emerging economies. There was only one research study between HIE and EE (Molinillo et al.,
2020), rest of multi-nation studies were within different HIE. This appears to be a novel
finding that can be further validated through future research with more data. Further, it
should also be explored whether information processing differs across eco-labels or
individuals from different social groups, regions and nationalities.
6. Managerial implications
Policymakers and organic food producers /retailers can benefit (Balezentis et al., 2019) by
optimising their marketing and promotions accordingly. Regulators in government and
organic food interest groups can strengthen the industry by providing incentives for growing
and marketing of organic food to increase its supply in the organic food market. Various
educational and awareness campaigns should be regularly conducted to increase consumer
trust. Simultaneously the government should address the issue of organic food safety and
traceability by initiating, maintaining and enforcing pragmatic policies for its promotion and
penalising for greenwashing. Marketers in high-income economies should promote the
environmental benefits of consuming organic food. Similarly, managers in emerging
economies should capitalise on consumers desire to eat healthy food. In addition, by
improving consumer’s awareness through get together, organic food fairs, farmer’s organic
markets, advertisements and promotional campaigns issues related to trust, food safety,
origin and traceability can also be addressed. Use of social media and subjective influence can
accelerate the adoption curve of organic food.
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