"Dynamics of purchasing behaviour concerning organic food“

Research project within the scope of the Federal Ministry of Consumer Protection, Food and Agriculture (BÖL)

Programme homepage: http://www.bundesprogramm-oekolandbau.de/

Project partners:

• ZMP Zentrale Markt- und Preisberichtsstelle für Erzeugnisse der Land-, Forst- und Ernährungswirtschaft GmbH, Leitung Dr. Paul Michels
• Gesellschaft für Konsumforschung GfK AG

Contact person at the University of  Kassel: Fabian Buder

Duration: July 2007 - April 2009

The main goal of the research project is to investigate the purchasing behaviour concerning organic food over time and the individual reasons for any change in purchasing behaviour. For the first time valid and representative data on the demand for organic food are at the disposal of the research project over a period of years (since 2004), which, as opposed to the usual panel research data, were focussed on the real purchasing behaviour of 20,000 GfK-panel households (compilation of all purchases of goods for daily use via scanner). For loose goods (without EAN-Code) there were 13,000 households at the research's disposal, which were equipped with a code book. Topics such as loyalty to organic products, correlation to purchasing behaviour, attitude, confusion between organic and conventional products and identification of loopholes in organic food products will be discussed.

The Department of Agricultural and Food Marketing is responsible for the conception and carrying out of comprehensive multivariate analyses of GfK-panel data and the publication of project results via papers and events.