Which consumers opt for organic wine and why? An analysis of the attitude-behaviour link
ISSN: 0007-070X
Article publication date: 26 July 2018
Issue publication date: 16 August 2018
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effect of attitudes and socio-demographics on wine consumers’ real purchase behaviour for organic wine.
Design/methodology/approach
This study is based on GfK household panel data, a real market data source of high population coverage. A two-part fractional model was applied as two distinct categories of wine buyers were observed. The first part of the two-part fractional model consisted of a standard binary choice model and defined the likelihood of belonging to the group of organic wine buyers. The second part of the model only took organic wine buyers into account and described their purchase intensity.
Findings
Preferences for organic products and sustainability concerns (e.g. environmental and social concerns) drive organic wine purchases. Proving a causal relation between attitudes and purchase behaviour gives evidence that stated preferences are a reliable indicator to predict consumer behaviour. However, the weak relation between attitudes and behaviour confirms the existence of an attitude-behaviour gap.
Practical implications
Quality benefits of organic wine production need to be communicated to attract new customers. Stronger focus should be put on sustainability issues with the aim of encouraging organic customers to also increase their expenditures for organic wine.
Originality/value
The influence of sustainability concerns on purchase behaviour is still controversial and no study, so far, has analysed real purchase data for organic wine. The results provide new insights on why attitudes do not fully transform into purchase behaviour.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) based on a decision of the parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany via the Federal Office for Agriculture and Food (BLE) under the Federal Programme for Organic Farming and Other Forms of Sustainable Agriculture (Grant No. 2814OE014). The authors are very grateful to the GfK Verein for providing us with the household panel data set. The authors thank Anne Christopherson for proofreading and copy-editing this paper.
Citation
Schäufele, I., Pashkova, D. and Hamm, U. (2018), "Which consumers opt for organic wine and why? An analysis of the attitude-behaviour link", British Food Journal, Vol. 120 No. 8, pp. 1901-1914. https://doi.org/10.1108/BFJ-03-2018-0141
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited