Content area
Full Text
Keywords: Consumer behaviour, organic food, sustainability, Purchase intention.
Abstract
The focus of the research was to propose and test a model to assess the impact of variables affecting the intention to purchase/consumption of organic food from the perspective of the consumer of this type of food. To meet the goals and hypotheses of this research was developed two focus groups and a transverse survey with 560 consumers of organic food in Minas Gerais, Brazil. About the gender of the respondents in survey, 74% were women and 26% were men. A model of consumer behaviour of organic food has been prepared based on the technique of structural equation modeling. It can be concluded that the only endogenous construct this model, intent to purchase/consumption, showed a correlation coefficient (R2) of 41%. Out of the three exogenous constructs, only two showed statistically significant impact, and these were the Belief and Attribute. The Reference Groups construct had an impact of 0.05, not significant. With respect to academic and managerial contributions, there is the rescue of a theoretical updated on the consumer behaviour of organic foods and suggestions for improvements to create actions that retails for advertising and sales promotion including a message of appreciation to the environment the quality and availability of organic food.
1. Introduction
What makes a person to buy a organic food? What are the variables that are considered by supporters of organic food? These issues motivated this study and the objective of this paper: What are the factors that determine significantly the intention to purchase/consumption of organic food and what the relationship of these factors with each other?
The consumer of organic food is in line with the concept of sustainable development. According Cuperschmid and Tavares (2002), the consumer of organic food is said to green consumer. For the United Nations (UN, 2012), sustainability is defined as "a principle of a society that maintains the characteristics necessary for a fair social system, environmentally balanced and economically prosperous for a long period of time and indefinitely". Organic food has a supply chain, which brings agroecological concepts, protecting the environment, rural workers and providing a fair income. Thus, organic food can be considered healthy and sustainable according to the opinion of the consumers themselves...