ifoam96.gif (1141 bytes)
Book of Abstracts

11th IFOAM
Scientific Conference
11-15 August 1996
Copenhagen, Denmark


Abstract front page
Subject index
Athor index

Symposia

Shoptest for organic grown vegetables in Germany S24

Hinderer, Regine and Hamm, Ulrich

Hohenheim University (420), D-70593 Stuttgart. Fachhochschule Neubrandenburg, P.O. Box 1902, D-17009 Neubrandenburg.

See also:
News from:

Organic.dk

Since a few years organic food is sold in conventional supermarkets in Germany, but the sales are very low in comparison with other countries. One of the reasons for the small success is the low knowledge of the consumers' wishes for example concerning the presentation of organic food in the shops, the influence of the price distance between conventional and organic products or the influence of the packaging.

Together with a farmers' cooperative and one of the leading German wholesalers for food a shoptest for organic grown vegetables has been done. The shoptest, which investigates the selling of products under controlled conditions in several stores, was connected with a multimeasurement method. In this study a questioning of 900 consumers, a conjoint-analysis and an information-display-matrix were used to test the acceptance of organic grown vegetables in conventional supermarkets. Different kinds of packing, prices, labels and presentation were tested in several shops. The main results can be summarized as follows: In the range of a conjoint-analysis the packing was found to be of great influence on the consumers' decision to buy. This influence can be positive in the case of a cotton net, or negative in the case of a PE-plasic bag. The price distance between conventional and organic grown vegetables was of great importance in the real selling situation, while the importance was underestimated in the questioning and the conjoint-analysis. The brand name was rather unimportant to consumers. This result is remarkably because there is no generic label for organic products in Germany. The kind of presentation has an important influence on the demand for organic grown vegetables in supermarkets; best results were found when organic vegetables were offered 'en bloc'.