Get some respect – buy organic foods! When everyday consumer choices serve as prosocial status signaling (original) (raw)
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Sweet taste of prosocial status signaling: When eating organic foods makes you happy and hopeful
Appetite, 2018
As the current research suggests that there are links between prosocial acts and status signaling (including sustainable consumer choices), we empirically study (with three experiments) whether food consumers go green to be seen. First, we examine how activating a motive for status influences prosocial organic food preferences. Then, we examine how the social visibility of the choice (private vs. public) affects these preferences. We found that when consumers' desire for status was elicited, they preferred organic food products significantly over their nonorganic counterparts; making the choice situation visible created the same effect. Finally, we go beyond consumers' evaluative and behavioral domains that have typically been addressed to investigate whether this (nonconscious) "going green to be seen" effect is also evident at the level of more physiologically-driven food responses. Indeed, status motives and reputational concerns created an improved senso-emotio...
European Scientific Journal, 2015
The aim of this paper is to create a more complex and holistic understanding of the value system of the political consumer. A case study was undertaken were the unit of analysis constituted 12 high users of organic food products. The empirical data was analysed by utilizing Reynolds and Gutman's laddering technique. The results revealed that the purposive selected informants activate different cognitive structures when buycotting organic food. In other words, the informants activate different values for similar attributes and consequences. This means that consumption of organic food is related to different value sets. That is, value sets where the political aspects are represented to different degrees. This means that some informants primarily buycott organic food for personal or family related reasons. For this group of informants, the focus is mainly on health related issues. Preservation of nature or environmental concern is important in the sense that it in the end relates to promoting personal security and health. This means that the environmental aspect cannot automatically be assumed to be a political motive when buycotting organic food, because it can be linked to personal motives. Understanding environmental issues solely as political motives thus reflects a rather mundane understanding. Further and more problematic it also leads to wrong results when trying to investigate the extent of political consumption from a positivistic paradigmatic posture.More specifically, survey studies will have a tendency to conclude that the phenomenon i.e. political consumption is much more prevalent than it actually is. The novel findings yield theoretical as well as practical implications. For practitioners a more comprehensive understanding of consumer values related to "politicized" products or services will enable companies to better understand consumers need and expectations. The latter being a necessity if confirmation of expectations, satisfaction, retention of customers and customer loyalty are goals of importance for the selling company.
Journal of Product & Brand Management, 2002
In seeking to expand our understanding of brands and their impact on consumer behaviour, assesses the relationship between brand associations, which contribute to consumption behaviour. A self-administered questionnaire was developed and administered to a non-probabilistic convenience sample of 315 young consumers. The findings of this research indicate that the status-conscious market is more likely to be affected by the symbolic characteristics of a brand; feelings aroused by the brand; and by the degree of congruency between the brand-user's self-image and the brand's image itself. Results also indicate that the higher the symbolic characteristics, the stronger the positive feelings, and the greater the congruency between the consumer and brand image, the greater the likelihood of the brand being perceived as possessing high status elements. The suspicion that status-laden brands would be chosen for status consumption and conspicuous consumption was also confirmed. These findings broaden our understanding of status-conscious consumers and their behaviour towards brands.
This paper focuses on the environmental and ethical attributes of food products and their production processes. These two aspects have been recently recognized and are becoming increasingly important, in terms of signaling and of consumer perception. There are two thematic domains: environmental and social. Within each domain there are two movements. Hence the paper first presents the four movements that have brought to the fore new aspects of food product quality, to wit: (1) aspects of environmental ethics (organic agriculture and integrated agriculture) and social ethics (fair trade and ethical trade). Then it describes how the actors in the movements (producers, retailers, NGOs, and governments) are organized and how consumers perceive each of the movements. From the perspective of the actors in the movements themselves, the movements are grouped into two "actors' philosophies": a "radical" philosophy (the organic production and fair trade movements that arose in radical opposition to conventional agriculture or unfair trade relations) and a "reformist" philosophy (the integrated agriculture and ethical trade movements that arose as efforts to modify but not radically change conventional agriculture). From the point of view of consumers, the classification of the movements is based on perceptions of the "domain" of the movements. That is, consumers tend to perceive as a grouping the organic production movement and the integrated agricultural movement, as they both deal with the environment. By contrast, consumers tend to group the fair trade movement and the ethical trade movement, as they both deal essentially with social ethics. Recently, key players such as large retailers and agribusinesses have adopted as part of their overall quality assurance programs both the environmental and the ethical attributes. Their involvement in and adoption of the goals of the movements have, however, generated tensions and conflicts, in particular within the radical movements, because of concerns of cooptation. The paper identifies challenges for those promoting food products with environmental and social/ethical attributes to communicate coherent signals to consumers at this crucial moment of an emerging mass market for these products.
The interplay of past consumption, attitudes and personal norms in organic food buying
Appetite, 2019
Our society has been marked by mounting discourses on the necessity of sustainable and environmentally friendly food consumption, as sustainability problems regarding food systems will likely become more severe in the future. Hence, calls have been made for more research on consumer behavior with respect to organic food consumption. Using a survey of 462 adults in a European Union country, this study investigates the role of past behavior in determining several consequences in the context of organic food consumption. The relationships among past organic food consumption, attitudes, environmental concern, personal norms and organic food buying intentions are examined. The results reveal that past organic food consumption positively affects attitudes toward buying organic food, personal norms and buying intentions. In addition to past consumption, attitudes and personal norms are also significant antecedents of organic food buying intentions. The total effect of past behavior on the intention is the strongest compared to other antecedents. The study also discusses the implications of the findings and identifies areas for future research.
The current study examined the role psychological determinants (self-identity, attitudes, perceived behavioral control, and norms) play in organic consumerism. Participants (N=252, meanage= 44.35, SD=15.29, 97% resided in Australia) were randomly assigned to one of the three experimental conditions: (1) Organic identity prime, (2) Pro-environmental identity prime, and (3) neither Pro-environmental nor Organic identity primes (control). Analysis of variance revealed that organic identity prime was associated with significant increase in intentions to purchase organic products, relative to both pro-environmental identity and control conditions. Follow-up mediation analysis indicated that organic self-identity increased consumer intentions by influencing their attitudes and group norms. These results demonstrate that organic identity can be primed to create identity-congruent shifts toward organic consumerism. Importantly, these findings have direct application for marketing strategies aiming at promoting and developing an “organic” brand.
Should I buy organic food? A psychological perspective on purchase decisions
Organic Food and Agriculture-New Trends and Developments in the Social Sciences 40 making a decision. This research tradition has its roots in value and attitude psychology and assumes that value orientations and attitudes are important determinants of people's behaviour. Before analysing their impact on the purchase of organic food in more detail, the three core concepts of this section shall be defined and distinguished from each other in the first paragraph of each subsection. 2.1 Values One of the most basic psychological concepts is a value. Schwartz (1994) defines values as "desirable transsituational goals, varying in importance, that serve as guiding principles in the life of a person or other social entity (page 21)". This definition outlines four important features that characterize values: (a) they define what is morally desirable to achieve for a person, (b) they are allocated on a very general level which makes them applicable across situation, (c) they may vary in importance between different cultures, people or situations, and (d) they motivate behaviour because they guide goal-setting and choice of action. Schwartz (1992) furthermore suggested a categorization of ten basic value orientations (power, achievement, hedonism, stimulation, self-direction, universalism, benevolence, conformity, tradition, security) which has been widely adapted in cross-national studies as well as in various behavioural domains. Grunert and Juhl (1995) applied the Schwartz value inventory in a study on Danish school teachers to determine the relation between basic value orientations, general environmental attitudes and organic food consumption. They were able to show that value orientations that fall into universalism were most characterizing for what they called "teachers with green attitudes", but also self-direction, stimulation and hedonism to a smaller degree. In a second step they demonstrated that "green" teachers much more likely occasional or regular buyers of organic food. Dreezens et al. (2005) used Schwartz' value system to analyse the relation between beliefs about organic food, attitudes towards organic food and basic value orientations. They found a positive relation between positive attitudes towards organic food and universalism and a negative with power. Furthermore, they could show that this relation is only indirect, mediated by beliefs about organic food (e.g., agreeing that organic food is good for the environment, tastes better, is healthier, etc.). The effects were of a moderate size. In a similar survey conducted with a population sample in Australia Lea and Worsley (2005) found that self-transcendence values-especially personally valuing nature, the environment and equality-were positively related to holding positive beliefs about organic food. However, the relation found was fairly weak. In a Norwegian survey Honkanen et al. (2006) found on the other hand a rather strong relation between the ecological shade of ethical food choice motives and a positive attitude towards organic food which eventually impacted the intention to buy organic food positively. Weak or no relations were found between political motives or religious motives and pro-organic attitudes. In a qualitative study Makatouni (2002) analysed the value orientations that were relevant for preferring a variety of organic produce over their conventionally produced counterparts in a sample of British parents of 4-12 year old children. The most relevant value embraced was preserving health of themselves and their families, but also protecting the environment and animal welfare were values important to people that preferred organic food alternatives. Health protection would fall under the security value in the Schwartz system, animal welfare and protection of the environment would in Schwartz' understanding be www.intechopen.com
Purpose-Primary aim of existing research is to detect the influence of environmental beliefs (awareness of consequences, injunctive social norms, environmental concern, environmental self-identity and aspiration of responsibility) on personal norms and subsequent effect thereof on organic food purchase intentions with mediation outcome of personal norms and moderating role of willingness to pay. Design/methodology/approach-The data was collected from individual Pakistani consumers with 430 effective questionnaires. Further the responses were analysed through SPSS, V-22, Smart PLS-3. Findings-The results showed that awareness of consequences, injunctive social norms, environmental concern, environmental self-identity and aspiration of responsibility showed significant influence to personal norms towards organic food. Subsequently, personal norms significantly affected organic food purchase intentions. Furthermore, willingness to pay for organic food proved to be positively significant moderator amongst personal norms and organic food purchase intentions. Implications of Research-Present study helps out organic food marketers to apprehend customer demand for organic food from moral perspective and suggests the basis for the future development of organic food. Originality-Present study is important for policy makers as it points out the ways to create awareness; secondly it also provides the schema to promote organically produced foods to consumers through messages based on morality.