Abstract
Even though sales volume for organic food has increased rapidly over the last years, yet many product categories such as sweets or cheese lack behind this development while organic milk, vegetables and eggs benefit most of all from the organic trend. It seems that frequently named motives for the purchase of organic food, i.e. health, taste and environmental benefits, do not hold true for these product categories. In light of the continuing expansion of the organic product range in discount stores and supermarkets, it is highly relevant to identify purchase drivers and barriers to develop well-targeted communication strategies to attract new organic food buyers. Thus, this study examines German households´ real purchase behaviour and its determinants. A two-part fractional regression model (participation and expenditure decision) was estimated to account for non-linear effects. Three separate analyses were carried out: food overall, sweets and cheese. The data was provided by the market research institute GfK and consists of 8,400 households who reported their food purchases in 2016. It was found that ethical motives consistently drive organic purchases, for organic products in general and for cheese and sweets. To increase the purchase frequency of organic buyers, additional ethical aspects of organic food products should be communicated, i.e. environmentally friendly packaging, fair-trade or low carbon footprint. Moreover, product category specific differences were found. Organic sweets were purchased by health conscious people with rather low general sweets consumption. For cheese, the general preference for local/domestic origin of organic products was not given. Organic food suppliers should offer a wide variety of cheese specialties (i.e. PDO) not only focusing on local/domestic production and are advised to communicate “free-from” characteristics (for example sugar, gluten or lactose) to attract new customers, specifically with regard to organic sweets.