Discussion and conclusions

locally over organically produced food. NOMC, however, express their stated preference for locally produced food equally in their purchase decisions in the experiment.

for organically produced food than NOMC. This finding underlines the stronger preference for organically produced food by OMC as identified in the survey. Concerning the consideration of product origins, OMC are not willing to pay more for locally produced food as opposed to organically produced food when the alternative is a product coming from Germany (exception: butter), but they are willing to pay more for a local product than for organically produced apples, butter, flour or steaks, if the alternative is a product from a neighbouring or a non-EU country. This indicates that OMC take both product attributes into consideration and trade them off against each other, depending on the particular purchase situation, especially on the origin and production method of all available product alternatives (cf. Gracia et al., 2014). The gap between the attitudes and the purchase behaviour appears to be larger for OMC, because they assess the importance of organic food production as very high, but in the choice experiment might rather decide for a product, which is produced closer to their home than for an organic alternative, which is produced far away.

NOMC show consistently lower willingness-to-pay values for all product attributes; the willingness-to-pay values for organically produced apples, butter, and flour are even negative.

Steaks are the only product for which these consumers are willing to pay a premium if they are produced organically. This potentially indicates the relevance of animal welfare in purchase decisions, which is frequently associated with organic production standards (cf.

Zander & Hamm, 2010). It is obvious that NOMC prefer locally over organically produced food, independent of the origin of the product alternative (i.e. from Germany, from a neighbouring country, from a non-EU country) for apples, butter, flour, and steaks. In the light of perceived higher prices of organic food, this finding corresponds to previous research by Padel and Foster (2005) and Stolz et al. (2011), revealing that conventional consumers are more price-sensitive than organic consumers. These results imply that NOMC rather act according to their stated attitudes, in that they do not view organic food production as very important and likewise are not willing to pay more for organically produced food.

Evidently, willingness-to-pay estimates for butter and flour are consistently lower than those for apples and steaks. The main reason for this finding is that, as the price levels for butter and flour are quite low, lower willingness-to-pay values will consequently result. In addition, butter and flour are both processed products as opposed to apples and steaks, which are unprocessed. This might indicate that consumers are willing to pay more for locally produced products, if these products are unprocessed. Additional studies are needed to examine whether local production is really less preferred by consumers for processed food products. For

organic products, the relation between the willingness-to-pay and the level of processing did not turn out to be as distinct as for local products in this study.

Against the background of those studies that already dealt with the question on how the two food trends, local and organic production, affect each other, this contribution revealed that OMC most likely also favour local food production. In some cases OMC prefer locally produced food even more than organically produced food, indicating that both attributes complement each other for this consumer group. This contribution, therefore, agrees to the findings of Gracia et al. (2014), suggesting that there are a number of consumers who favour the combination of local and organic food production.

Thus, retailers of organic food products should also focus on sourcing food locally and clearly communicate that these products are local. Similarly, Zander and Hamm (2010) recommend to communicate additional ethical attributes, especially animal welfare and local production, as a promising strategy to differentiate products on the organic market. In their study animal welfare and local production turned out to be the most important attributes in consumers’

decisions for organic food, even more important than price, revealing the willingness to purchase organic products with additional ethical values (Zander & Hamm, 2010). Likewise, the Oekobarometer study (2013) identified a great share of German consumers who would appreciate food products comprising both attributes. These findings lead to the conclusion that the combination of product attributes, especially of those that seem to complement one another, should be pursued more intensively in food products’ marketing and communication.

Concerning the methodological approach, we decided not to use factor analysis to reduce the statements tested in this survey. The results of an explorative factor analysis were not satisfactory, as one third of the statements had to be excluded and the variance explained by those factors was very low. Furthermore, we restrained from applying a latent class approach as this study comprises individual designs and models for each product in the choice experiment. Hence, a latent class analysis would have yielded different consumer groups for each product. The aim of this research was to closer examine organic-minded consumers.

Linking the survey results to the modelling of consumer choices for all four products turned out to be a suitable way to deeply analyse the differences in attitudes and purchase behaviour between two consumer groups. The combination of both methods helped to draw a consistent picture of organic and local food purchase behaviour of organic-minded consumers and reveal a gap between their attitudes and their behaviour during the choice decisions. The

identification of this gap reveals the advantage of additionally applying a choice experiment instead of only directly surveying consumers on their attitudes and preferences.

Further research is needed to find out more about differences in the preferences for local and organic, processed and unprocessed food products. Studies with comparable results could not be found. Likewise, this contribution shows that consumers’ preferences and purchase behaviour might vary depending on the region of residence. Hence, to generalise findings for one country or to identify regional differences within one country, survey locations need to be as widely spread as possible to take regional characteristics into account.