2015/09/17 by Jessica Aschemann‐Witzel, Stephan Zielke · 489 citations
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Business, Management and Accounting · Psychology · #Agriculture #Business #Consumer Behavior in Brand Consumption and Identification #Consumer behaviour #Economics #Environmental Sustainability in Business #Marketing #Microeconomics #Organic Food and Agriculture #Organic product #Perception #Price premium #Product (mathematics) #Product differentiation #Psychographic #Psychology #Sustainability #Willingness to pay
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/joca.12092
published in Journal of Consumer Affairs 51(1), 211-251 (Wiley)
crossref issued 2015/09/17 · crossref published 2015/09/17 · crossref published-online 2015/09/17 · openalex publication_date 2015/09/17 · crossref created 2015/09/17 · crossref published-print 2017/03/01 · crossref deposited 2023/10/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04 · crossref indexed 2026/08/04
Support for organic farming is a promising policy for improving sustainability in the food sector. Further consumer demand, however, is hindered by high prices. We review research from 2000 to 2014 on the role of perceived price, income, price knowledge, willingness to pay, and reactions to price changes on organic food. We find that price is the major perceived barrier to purchase. Income is only a partial explanatory factor and is superseded by psychographic variables. Willingness to pay a premium is around 30% (ranging from 0% to 105%) and depends on consumer segments and product category. Price knowledge is vague, and organic consumers' price sensitivity is relatively lower than that of occasional or nonorganic consumers. The results suggest that further market differentiation in terms of organic consumer segments and food categories is necessary. Furthermore, we discuss detailed implications for public policy and practice and present a future research agenda.