ORGANIC FOOD PRODUCTS

Organic Food Products, Consumer Demand, and Grocery Retail Marketers Role

Organic Food Products, Consumer Demand, and Grocery Retail Marketers Role

Introduction

The recent growth in the interest, in vital consumer goods, has made substantial inroads into food production and consumption patterns in UK. This growth has accelerated over the past 20 years, with global sales of organic food now in the billions. This paper briefly considers what organic food is, the reasons people motivate to purchase and consume organic food, and some of the multiple ways organic food grows. These categories often overlap, reflecting the complexity that inheres to the ecosystems in which organic food is grown and in how such food should market, sold, and transported. This paper explores the constituent elements of needs and wants that make some consumers deliberately seek out and purchase organic food products, which generally sell at premium prices (Vindigni, Janssen, et al 2002, 624). It also presents an analysis of important for Grocery Retail Marketers to understand the needs and wants of these consumers.

Organic Food - Overview

Organic food refers to agricultural production without the use of synthetic chemicals. Organic agriculture base on principles of sustainability—the ability to be continued in the long term without negative environmental effects—and designed to improve and support soil health. It prohibits using human-made chemicals such as pesticides, herbicides, and synthetic fertilizers. For livestock farming, organic agriculture prohibits the use of antibiotics, hormones such as bovine growth hormone, or synthetic medications (Dibb 2002, 8). Organic agriculture also prohibits the use of genetically modified plants or animals. Instead, organic agriculture relies on more labour-intensive management such as using a chipper to remove weeds and the use of natural inputs such as composts and homeopathic animal health treatments (Heaton 2001).

Prior to the advent of chemically synthesized fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides that facilitated industrial agriculture, farmers relied on organic matter such as manure, guano, fish meal, leguminous crops, or cover crops to enrich soil with nutrients, enhance its water retention and tilt, and minimize erosion. Organic food products regularly appears in journalism and marketing as a straightforward product - food grown without the use of artificial fertilizers, pesticides, growth hormones, fungicides, irradiation, and genetically modified organisms. Many describe this as food that is more “natural” or more “traditional” in its production; it certainly measures a gap between organic farming practices and those of most non-organic farming.

Need and Wants of Consumer to Organic Food Products

Organic consumerism is arguably the only reason why there is any widespread discussion of organic agriculture and food, as it has established not only an organic food products industry in the food system, but has also created a constituency for the ideas around organic farming and food products. The organic food movement is a green alternative to more conventional food production in consumers. Organic food is believed by its advocates to be healthier, ecologically balanced, and free of pesticides that define the needs and wants of consumers. While quantity and mass production are the major concerns of nonorganic food producers, ...