Employing a Dichotomous Choice Model to Assess Willingness to Pay (WTP) for Organically Produced Products

Abstract

This study employs a dichotomous choice model to identify the socio-economic characteristics and attitudes that influence consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) a premium for organically produced products (OPP). Considering consumers' growing interest in quality and safety of food, the study attempts to identify consumers level of awareness on OPP, the intention to buy OPP and the WTP a higher price for OPP. Results highlight consumers awareness and intention, revealing useful information for the development of OPP market. The estimated maximum WTP indicates that consumers are willing to pay a substantial extra price to purchase OPP. Finally, WTP seems to be affected by certain consumer attitudes and socio-economic factors.     

Food Safety and Consumers' Willingness to Pay for Labelled Beef in Spain

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to assess the quality/safety value for beef consumers, measuring their willingness to pay a price premium for labelled beef. From a survey conducted among food shoppers within the household, consumers are segmented according to their safety perception of specific food products. For each segment, their willingness to pay for labelled beef is calculated. Finally, the main factors explaining such a decision are considered. The results indicate that food scares, the perception of a negative impact of agricultural production on the environment and health concerns are having a major impact on the food consumer purchasing decisions for beef. However, most consumers are not willing to pay a price premium for labelled beef.     

The use of smart biosensors during a food safety incident: Consumers' cognitive-behavioural responses and willingness to pay

Intelligent and active packaging could allow consumers to control cognitive reactions linked to the risk of consuming food products contaminated by microbiological pathogens and thus mitigating negative consequences of food safety incidents. However, despite advances in technology, consumers' reactions and willingness to pay for active and intelligent packaging in the absence and presence of food safety incidents remain somewhat unexplored. To fill such a gap this study incorporates protection motivation theory (PMT) within a contingent valuation survey conducted in the UK to explore consumers' behavioural responses to risk communication in the absence and presence of a food safety incident. These responses were moderated by the possibility of buying hypothetical meat products marketed with biosensors informing consumers of the presence of bacteria post-purchase. A singular approach was developed to identify the following four behavioural responses of the PMT's cognitive mediating process: no response, fear, low response and danger control. Results indicate that the theoretical components of PMT play a different role in the absence and presence of food safety incidents. Respondents who receive risk information are willing to pay more than other participants to adopt precautionary behaviour and that purchasing behaviour varied across these four cognitive-behavioural responses. Governmental institutions, the food industry and retailers should consider working together to reassure consumers by investing in technology that may help consumers to mitigate fear during a food safety incident, but also to develop appropriate risk communication strategies that should focus more on the cognitive-behavioural outcomes analysed in this study.     

Does impact of campaign and consumer guilt help in exploring the role of national identity and purchase decisions of consumers?

Extant research emphasized the role of consumer guilt and the importance of campaigns in consumers' willingness to buy domestic-made products. The antecedents of willingness to buy domestic-made products have not been well understood in literature. This is because the experience of national identity vis a vis the understanding of the consumers' guilt feeling has partly been explained. To address these concerns, we developed a survey in the context of Indian cities. We note that consumers' experience with foreign-made products is negative when they feel uncomfortable buying them, and thereby develop a feeling of guilt. Marketing managers are more likely to prepare consumers' experiences with their products by emphasizing the high or low impact of the campaign on consumers’ willingness to buy domestic-made products.     

Does Taste Beat Food Safety? Evidence From the “Pêra Rocha” Case in Portugal

Nowadays, fresh fruits such as pears are differentiated by cultivars, origins, and appearances, as well as by companies' production and processing methods. We may now observe many denominations of origin, retailers,' and private labels in order to signal the differentiation to the consumers, who are often willing to pay large price premiums for products with specific attributes. In this article, we used an experimental auction to assess how information on quality attributes affects consumers' willingness to pay for different types of pears. The main results show that information on the products' characteristics related to food safety instantly influences consumers' willingness to pay. However, it appears that in the end, sensory intrinsic attributes related to taste beat the guarantee of food safety in driving the buying behaviour.     

Environmental and Societal Positioning as Sources of Competitive Advantage in an Agricultural Firm

This research seeks to ascertain whether an agricultural firm's social and environmental positioning affects consumers' perceptions of the attributes of its products. Results showed that companies that are perceived to be more socially and environmentally conscious received better ratings for their produce in terms of quality and freshness. In addition, consumers reported that they would be willing to pay more for food grown by socially and environmentally conscious firms.     

Identifying the critical factors of customer behavior: An integration perspective of marketing strategy and components of attitudes

The purpose of this empirical study is to operationalize the relationship of green marketing's influence on consumer attitudes via the mediating role of marketing mix towards green products to validate the proposed research model in the Taiwanese context of explaining consumers' willingness to be environmentally friendly. The model is based on structural equation modeling (SEM) from data collected from 977 online consumers. The findings revealed that green consumption intention was significantly and indirectly driven by attitude to green products. Additionally, the effect of perceived quality on marketing mix and consumer willingness in environmental concern is both significant and positive. However, when a restaurant has high consumer social responsibility (CnSR) for marketing mix, the consumer attitudes of cognitive, affective, and behavioral model (C-A-B model) is less effective. These findings have contributed to the revival of the theory of planned behavior (TPB) and offer a comprehensive understanding of consumer attitude, consumer social responsibility, marketing mix and perceived quality impact that a restaurant has on the ability to raise consumer willingness to purchase green products or food. We provides valuable suggestions to marketers to design from the perspective of green marketing policies and strategies in order to accommodate Taiwan's indigenous green restaurants.     

Measuring consumer's willingness to pay for organic and Fair Trade products

Previous research has extensively studied consumer's environmental and social concerns. However, measuring the value of the environmental or social dimension of a product remains a challenge. This paper proposes to partially fill this gap by measuring the double ‘Fair Trade and organic’ labels' value using an experimental method – the Becker‐DeGroot‐Marschak's mechanism. Two ‘organic and Fair Trade’ and two conventional chocolate products were tested on a sample of 102 consumers. Results show that organic and Fair Trade labels increase consumers' willingness to pay, and allow the identification of three consumers clusters. The first cluster represents people insensitive to the label. For the second cluster, the ‘organic and Fair Trade’ labels' influence on the improving image of the products is positive and important. And finally, for the third cluster, the valuation of the ‘organic and Fair Trade’ label is determined by the product's taste. Our research contributes to a better understanding of consumers' valuation of Fair Trade and organic labels, leading to our conclusions, which offer managerial implications with respect to this market (importance of taste and usefulness of double labels).     

Ethical product premiums: antecedents and extent of consumers' willingness to pay

Corporate social responsibility is now high on the strategic agendas of major retailers, as consumers demonstrate growing ethical awareness and concern. However, evidence regarding consumers' willingness to pay the price premiums often associated with ethical products is inconclusive. Studies have adopted various survey-based and experimental methods, focusing upon different product categories, each with particular ethical issues. This study included a Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET) exploratory investigation then a mail survey of 1000 consumers, indicating willingness to pay ethical premiums across 6 categories. Demographics proved to be poor predictors, although education explained some variance in willingness to pay. Ethical motivations, measured within the framework of the Decisional Balance Scale, proved stronger antecedents, providing guidelines for the communication of ethical attributes. Implications for retailers and opportunities for researchers are discussed.     

Negativity bias in consumer price response to ethical information

The increasing debate on corporate ethics raises the question of whether consumers are willing to reward and punish corporate behaviour based on its ethicality. In this context, this article investigates the direct effect on consumers' willingness to pay. Price response to product‐related ethical information is explored in an experiment dealing with social issues in sportswear and environmental issues in consumer electronics. It is shown that in both areas, consumers demonstrate an increased willingness to pay for ethically produced goods. However, the response is subject to a negativity bias. In contrast to prior research that used abstract stimulus measures, a ratio for quantifying this bias is suggested based on consumers' willingness to pay and their price expectations. This measure allows us to analyse a consumer's individual bias.     

South African consumers' willingness to pay a premium for Karoo Lamb: The influence of subjective and objective knowledge,label information and demographics

In South Africa, Karoo Lamb is a prestigious product associated with free range production. This study examined the influence of subjective and objective Karoo Lamb knowledge, the importance of label information, and demographics on consumers' willingness to pay a premium for Karoo Lamb products. A panel of 355 consumers who had previously purchased lamb/mutton products completed an online questionnaire. The importance of Karoo Lamb label information, subjective Karoo Lamb knowledge and population group had a significant positive impact on willingness to pay a premium for Karoo Lamb. Objective Karoo Lamb knowledge and other demographics did not have a significant impact.     

The impact of online celebrity in livestreaming E-commerce on purchase intention from the perspective of emotional contagion

The purpose of this study is to investigate (1) if online celebrities can directly emotionally influence consumers, and (2) if the other audiences of the same livestream can indirectly emotionally influence consumers to increase their willingness to buy the products recommended by the online celebrities. Therefore, to understand the reasons for the successes of livestreaming e-commerce. Two studies have been conducted: in Study 1, a questionnaire-based survey has been used for data collection and AMOS version 17.0 software was used to analyze the data of the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM); in Study 2, a web data crawler for data collection was developed using python software, and the collected data were processed by ICTCLAS text splitting tool and analyzed by Stata/MP 13.0 software for the econometric model constructed in this paper. This study found that the performance of online celebrities can stimulate consumers' emotions, and thus enhance consumers' purchase intention regarding the products recommended. This study also found that pleasure, arousal, admiration, and emotional trust can influence purchase behavior for cosmetics and clothing. For food products, only pleasure emotion, arousal emotion and admiration emotion can increase the willingness to purchase such products. For other audiences who watch the same Online celebrity for food products, the pleasure, arousal, and admiration emotions can increase searches for, and purchases of the products recommended. This study identified that online celebrities' performances can emotionally influence consumers' willingness to purchase products recommended by online celebrities directly. In addition, the emotions of audiences watching the online celebrities can indirectly influence consumers' willingness to purchase products recommended by the online celebrities.     

Organic food consumers' trade‐offs between local or imported,conventional or organic products: a qualitative study in Shanghai

This paper presents a qualitative study of the trade‐offs made by organic food product consumers in the Chinese Metropolis of Shanghai. More precisely, this article deals with trade‐offs that consumers make between three types of products: (1) locally produced organic food products, (2) products that are locally and conventionally produced and (3) imported organic food products. We used a qualitative methodology using open questions and projective techniques and based on 23 individual interviews. Local organic products are the products best perceived by the Chinese interviewees, who think that organic food is beneficial to health and makes agriculture more environmentally friendly. The fact that food is produced locally is another positive argument for many interviewees who do not perceive any important differences between local and imported, more expensive, organic food products. Local and conventionally produced food products give rise to worries related to health and consumers buy them only because they are much cheaper than organic products. The reasons for choosing organic products are mostly related to health issues. Altruistic motives such as environmental concerns, food miles concerns or support for small producers are only emerging. This study mostly highlighted consumers' trade‐offs between different individual benefits, mainly health vs. economic benefits. However, some trade‐offs between altruistic (environmental concerns) and individual (economic) benefits are apparent, confirming emerging altruistic motives behind organic food consumption.     

The Impact of Competitiveness on Consumer Responses to Comparative Advertisements

We examine the impact of consumers' competitive tendencies on responses to comparative advertising appeals and the underlying role of schadenfreude: pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others. Consistent with our theory that the depiction of others' misfortunes is compatible with more-competitive consumers' concerns for distinguishing themselves via competition, our studies show that comparative ads are associated with greater schadenfreude, as well as more favorable attitudes and a greater willingness to pay (WTP), among more- (versus less-) competitive consumers. Further results indicate that such relatively more favorable responses among consumers with greater competitive tendencies are limited to comparative ads depicting misfortunes involving brands whose choice is more deserving of failure (i.e., lower-quality brands). Importantly, even less-competitive consumers are revealed to respond favorably to comparative ads and to experience more schadenfreude when they are assured that they will not suffer the depicted misfortune.     

The impact of different types of concernment on the consumption of organic food

Previous research has mainly focused on consumers' environmental values and attitudes to explain green consumption. However, it has been neglected how situational factors like the way a consumer is affected by the impacts of environmental pollution influence environmental attitudes and the demand for organic food products. To fill this void, we firstly introduce a taxonomy of different types of factual concernment and perceived concern. Factual concernment describes the manner in which a person is affected by the negative consequences of environmental pollution, whereas perceived concern expresses an anxious sense of interest. Building on that taxonomy, an experimental study analyses how four types of factual concernment (direct vs. indirect; material vs. immaterial) influence consumers' perceived concerns (in terms of environmental and health concern) as well as the readiness to gather information, the readiness to make sacrifices, the willingness to pay higher prices and purchase intentions. The study reveals that particularly direct concernment fosters the consumption of organic food. However, the study did not find any differences between the influences of material and immaterial concernment on the organic food purchase decision.     

Energy efficient household appliances in emerging markets: the influence of consumers' values and knowledge on their attitudes and purchase behaviour

This research integrates both motivational and cognitive approaches to better understand consumers' purchase behaviour of energy efficient household appliances in emerging markets. A unique values, knowledge, attitudes and behaviour model was developed, and then validated by obtaining data from Vietnamese consumers which yielded 682 usable responses. The findings confirm that consumers with stronger adherence to egoistic values are more likely to develop negative attitudes towards environmental protection, and they tend to formulate positive attitudes towards individual inconvenience associated with the purchase of energy efficient appliances. In contrast, biospheric and altruistic values facilitate consumers' purchase behaviour by enhancing their attitudes towards environmental protection, and by also reducing their attitudes in relation to individual inconvenience. Interestingly, consumers with high knowledge about energy efficient appliances tend to believe that the purchase of such products is important for environmental protection, and they are likely to negate the perception of inconvenience associated with the purchase. Attitudes were found to be significant determinants of both purchase intention and behaviour. The implications for policymakers, marketers and other stakeholders are discussed and future research directions presented.     

Adoption of Environment-Friendly Cars: Direct vis-à-vis Mediated Effects of Government Incentives and Consumers' Environmental Concern across Global Car Markets

This study explores the impact of consumers' concern for the environment, government incentives, and consumers' environmental image on the adoption of environment-friendly cars (EFCs). A total of 2,400 consumers across five key car markets (China, Germany, Japan, South Korea, USA) were sampled. Structural equation modelling was conducted, followed by ANOVA and UNIANOVA. In four of the five markets, environmental concern is key in the adoption of EFCs, whereas government incentives appear generally ineffective. China is contrastive in that government incentives, rather than environmental concerns, are a key factor. Environmental image only (significantly) mediates the adoption of EFCs in China. Examination of the interaction between environmental image and the adoption of EFCs indicates that environmental image has different impacts in different markets.     

Research on the influencing factors of consumers’ green purchase behavior in the post-pandemic era

The severe impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the world has caused consumers to think about environmental issues. Although green products are very important to environmental sustainability, the factors that influence consumers' purchase behavior of green products is unclear. This study aims to explore the impact mechanism of social media marketing on consumers' green product purchase behavior in the post-pandemic era. Based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB), this study constructs an extended TPB model to understand the influencing factors of Chinese consumers' green product purchase behavior in the post-pandemic era. The empirical results of 489 questionnaires show that social media marketing, product knowledge and crisis awareness have a direct or indirect positive influence on purchase intentions. Perceived behavioral control and intentions have positive effects on behavior. The attribution of responsibility facilitates the relationship between intentions and behaviors. The results have important implications for enterprises’ sustainability strategies and provide a framework for investigating green buying behaviors in Chinese culture in the post-pandemic era.