Implications
This study has shown that ecologically oriented
consumers are more likely to form intentions to
consume organic food, thus making them a
natural target for organic food marketers.
Consumers who are concerned with fair trade
and human rights may be another important
segment.
The results suggest that marketers of organic
products may appeal to two levels in the belief
hierarchy in their communications: the ethical
belief level or the attitude level (based on
product attributes). This means that the
demand of organic products may be enhanced
either by appealing to general ethical and
ecological beliefs or by appealing to the
attitudinal beliefs based on the attributes of
organic products. Also, one could appeal to the
potential advantages of consuming organic
products. Global values, which were not
measured in our model, may be an additional
level in the belief hierarchy that can be
appealed to in marketing (Vinson et al.,
1977). Dreezens et al. (2005) found that
universalism values had an impact on attitudes towards organic food, thus providing another
path to influencing attitudes. Generally, the
deeper a belief is located in the belief
hierarchy, the more stable it is. Thus it is an
obvious advantage if personal values can be
activated and related to organic food.
There may be consumers who are environmentally interested, but who are not active
consumers of organic food. The marketers’ goal
wouldthenbetocreatepositiveintentions
towards organic products among non-users.
Actually, universalism values (which are motivated by concern for protecting nature) are
important to most people. They may not,
however, see the link between these values
and organic food. Therefore, activating universalism values or ethical beliefs (Verplanken and
Holland, 2002) may enhance the likelihood of
choosing organic products, thus increasing the
market share for such products. There may thus
be more potential in the organic food market
than its current status shows