MRKT 640 Week 7 Research Project: Final Document Example

Saying Yes, Buying No: The Theory of Planned Behavior and the Purchase of Organic Food

Abstract

Many consumers say they intend to buy organic food, yet organic products remain a modest share of household food spending. This paper examines the gap through the theory of planned behavior, a cognitive model that traces behavior to intention and intention to three judgments: personal evaluation, social expectation and felt control. A review of meta-analyses and of organic food studies in Europe, Asia and elsewhere shows that the theory predicts intentions well, with attitude the most consistent predictor. Moral attitudes, emotions and self-identity add to that prediction. The theory is weaker after intention, where habits, low availability, price and the shopping situation divert consumers. The paper recommends that marketers strengthen intentions with safety, identity and moral meaning, raise actual control at the shelf, and help shoppers plan, while making only truthful claims.

Introduction

Organic food enjoys an unusual position in consumer research. Surveys find favorable attitudes among large shares of shoppers, and organic labels now appear in nearly every category of a supermarket. Yet the share of food spending that goes to organic products remains small, and many shoppers who describe themselves as supporters buy organic only occasionally. Hughner et al. (2007), reviewing why people buy organic food, found that consumers give many reasons, such as health, taste, environmental concern, food safety and animal welfare, and also many reasons for not buying more, especially price and limited availability. The market therefore offers a natural laboratory for a basic question in consumer behavior: when do favorable attitudes become purchases? The question matters commercially as well as theoretically. Organic products usually carry a price premium, so each shopper who converts a favorable attitude into regular buying is worth more to a grocer than a shopper buying the conventional equivalent, and each one who intends to buy but does not represents revenue the category is failing to collect.

Of the models built for that kind of question, Ajzen's theory of planned behavior has been applied most often. It belongs to the cognitive tradition, which treats consumers as decision makers who form beliefs and evaluations and act on them. Mothersbaugh and Hawkins (2016) describe attitudes as built from cognitive, affective and behavioral components and explain that marketers influence behavior by changing beliefs and evaluations, a view the theory formalizes. The argument of this paper is that the model forecasts organic buying intentions with real success, yet accounts for purchases only once moral convictions and identity are added on the near side of intention and the shopping situation on the far side, and that the same pattern shows marketers where their efforts belong. It addresses two questions: how well the theory's predictors explain intentions to buy organic food, and why so many intentions fail to become purchases.

The Theory and Its Record

In Ajzen (1991), what someone plans to do is the nearest cause of what they do, and that plan depends in turn on three judgments: attitude, whether doing it seems good or bad; subjective norm, whether people who matter seem to want it done; and perceived behavioral control, whether it seems within reach. That last judgment also bears on behavior without passing through intention, to the degree that the felt control is accurate. Each of the three predictors rests on underlying beliefs, about the consequences of the behavior, about what important others think and about the factors that help or hinder it. Ajzen reviewed early evidence and concluded that the model predicted intentions with high accuracy and accounted for considerable variance in behavior, while noting open questions, including whether past behavior adds to prediction.

The theory's record since then is strong but uneven. Pooling results from 185 separate tests of the model, Armitage and Conner (2001) reported that the model explained about two fifths of the variation in intentions and just over a quarter of the variation in behavior. Perceived control mattered beyond attitudes and norms, while subjective norms were the weakest of the three predictors, which the authors traced partly to weak measurement. The model performed better when behavior was reported by participants than when it was observed or recorded objectively. Both findings matter for organic food research, in which most studies rely on self-reported buying and in which social pressure may be less direct than it is for behaviors such as smoking or exercise.

Sheeran (2002) took up the second half of the model, the link from intention to behavior, by synthesizing earlier meta-analyses. Intentions predicted behavior to a useful degree, but a large share of behavior remained unexplained. Sheeran also reviewed what moderates the link, including the type of behavior, the stability of intentions and the role of habit, which may govern routine behaviors with little conscious deliberation. Grocery shopping, repeated weekly and often done in a hurry, is just the kind of behavior in which habit might be expected to override a new intention.

The Theory Applied to Organic Food

Studies of organic food mostly confirm the model's account of intention. The most comprehensive evidence comes from Scalco et al. (2017), who pooled studies of organic food consumption and tested the model with meta-analytic structural equation modeling. Their results supported the robustness of the theory in this domain: attitudes, norms and perceived control related to intentions, and intentions related to behavior, as the model predicts. Because the meta-analysis was limited to organic food, it gives a better benchmark for this market than general reviews. It also shows that the theory transfers from health and social behaviors, where it was first tested, to a consumer purchase that involves price, brands and retail settings, which supports its use in marketing research more generally.

Individual studies show how the predictors operate in different settings. Among Finnish consumers buying organic bread and flour, Tarkiainen and Sundqvist (2005) found that a revised model in which subjective norms worked through attitudes, rather than directly on intention, fit better than the original. Attitude explained most of the variation in intention, and intention was closely related to reported buying. In Taiwan, Chen (2007) found that food-related personality traits moderated the relationships between attitudes and intentions, which suggests that the same attitude may lead to different intentions in consumers who differ in, for example, their openness to unfamiliar foods. Among young consumers in India, Yadav and Pathak (2016) found only partial support for the model and extended it with further constructs to explain intentions better.

Other studies examine what shapes the attitudes themselves. In a face-to-face survey of 463 respondents, Paul and Rana (2012) found that health, availability and education had positive effects on attitudes toward buying organic food. A later review by the same researchers, Rana and Paul (2017), mapped the field and proposed an agenda for further research. Read side by side, the studies suggest that national and personal differences change the weight of each predictor more than they change the model's basic structure. In Finland social pressure seemed to act through attitude, in Taiwan personality changed how strongly attitude led to intention, and in India the model needed additional constructs, yet in each case attitude remained central. Taken together, the studies answer the first research question: the model predicts intentions to buy organic food well, and attitude is its most reliable predictor, while the role of social pressure varies with the setting. The studies also share a limit, since almost all measured intentions or self-reported buying rather than observed purchases.

What the Standard Model Leaves Out Before Intention

Several researchers have argued that the standard model misses feelings, moral convictions and identity, all of which seem central to organic food. Aertsens et al. (2009), reviewing personal determinants of organic consumption, tied organic choices to abstract values, benevolence and universalism among them, alongside security and hedonism, and called for more attention to emotions, personal norms and uncertainty. The empirical studies below test some of these additions.

The pattern across these studies is consistent. When researchers add moral and affective measures, prediction of intention improves, sometimes enough that moral attitude displaces subjective norms as a predictor, as Arvola et al. (2008) found in two of three countries. Dean et al. (2008) found that a positively worded moral component helped prediction for both a fresh and a processed food, while negatively worded items did not, and feelings about buying organic predicted intention strongly. Identity adds something further. Michaelidou and Hassan (2008) found that seeing oneself as an ethical consumer predicted both attitude and intention, and Dean et al. (2012) found that self-identity as an organic buyer added to prediction even when past behavior was taken into account.

These findings connect to the textbook's treatment of self-concept. Mothersbaugh and Hawkins (2016) explain that consumers buy products in part to express and maintain who they believe they are. For an organic buyer, a basket of organic produce may be a statement about being careful, responsible or ethical. The finding by Michaelidou and Hassan (2008) that food safety mattered more for attitude than health consciousness also hints that shoppers like organic food for reasons other than the health benefits most organic advertising stresses. The textbook's account of attitude change offers marketers several routes, among them changing the beliefs consumers hold about an attribute, changing how much weight they give it, and appealing to feelings rather than beliefs. The organic studies suggest that the affective and moral routes may be at least as promising as the belief route, because the added predictors that most improved intention were feelings of rightness and identity, not new information about nutrients. A shopper who already believes organic food is somewhat healthier may not be moved by another statistic but may respond to a message about the kind of farm the food came from.

The Gap Between Intention and Purchase

The model's largest weakness in this market lies after intention, and the second research question asks why. Part of the answer begins earlier than intention. Vermeir and Verbeke (2006), studying young Belgian consumers and sustainable dairy products, found that favorable attitudes did not always produce intentions, and that the shortfall tracked how involved shoppers were, whether they believed their own purchase made a difference, what others around them did and whether the products seemed easy to find. A shopper who likes the idea of sustainable food but doubts that one purchase makes any difference, or who rarely sees the product, may never form a firm intention.

For those who do form intentions, the shopping trip itself becomes the obstacle. Carrington et al. (2010) proposed that ethically minded consumers fail to follow through for three reasons that the theory leaves out. First, intentions are often vague, and shoppers who never decide exactly when and where they will buy organic, which the framework calls an implementation intention, are less likely to follow through. Second, the control a shopper really has in the aisle may differ from the control the same person sensed when forming the intention, as when a store is out of stock or the price is higher than expected. Third, the situational context, such as shopping with children, in a hurry or in an unfamiliar store, can redirect behavior. The textbook's discussion of situational influences makes the same point from the marketing side: physical surroundings, time pressure and the task a shopper has in mind can change what is bought.

Habit adds a further reason. Sheeran (2002) emphasized that routine behaviors may be governed less by intentions than by automatic responses to familiar cues. A shopper who has bought the same conventional milk for ten years may reach for it while thinking about something else, regardless of a new intention to buy organic. The barriers Hughner et al. (2007) identified, especially price and availability, then work on a shopper whose attention is already elsewhere.

The answer to the second research question is therefore that intentions are lost at two points: before they form, through doubt about effectiveness and low perceived availability, and after they form, through vague plans, limited actual control, the shopping situation and habit. The theory's perceived behavioral control construct anticipates some of these barriers, but a survey measure of perceived control taken at home cannot capture how much control a tired shopper really has on a busy evening in the aisle.

Limitations of the Evidence

Three limits run through the research reviewed here and qualify the paper's conclusions. First, most studies measure intention or self-reported purchasing, and as Armitage and Conner (2001) showed, the model performs better with self-reports than with observed behavior, so the published record probably overstates how well the theory predicts real buying. Second, the samples vary widely, from Finnish hypermarket shoppers to young consumers in India, and many rely on convenience or online panel samples whose members may be more interested in food than the average shopper. Third, the studies define organic food in different ways, sometimes as a single product such as apples or bread and sometimes as a whole category, which makes direct comparison difficult. Hughner et al. (2007) noted that the word organic carries many meanings for consumers, and researchers have not settled on one either. These limits do not overturn the pattern the paper describes, which appears across countries and products, but they mean that the size of each effect should be treated as approximate.

Implications for Marketers

Each point at which intentions slip away gives marketers a place to intervene. Before intention, messages should draw on the motives that the research shows to be strongest. Because food safety predicted attitude more strongly than health consciousness in one study (Michaelidou & Hassan, 2008), and because moral attitudes and identity add to intention (Arvola et al., 2008; Dean et al., 2012), campaigns might emphasize what organic certification controls, what it means for farms and animals, and what kind of shopper chooses it, rather than relying on general health claims. Messages that show the cumulative effect of individual purchases may also address the doubts about effectiveness that Vermeir and Verbeke (2006) identified.

At the shelf, retailers can raise actual control. Paul and Rana (2012) found availability to be an influence on attitudes, and in a store it is a precondition of buying. Reliable stock, organic options placed beside their conventional counterparts rather than in a separate aisle, and smaller pack sizes that lower the price per trip can all narrow the distance between perceived and actual control. Price promotions on organic staples may help occasional buyers form a habit, which over time could work for organic food rather than against it.

Between home and store, marketers can help shoppers plan. Grocery apps and online ordering let shoppers build lists in advance, which turns a general intention into the kind of specific plan Carrington et al. (2010) described. A retailer could invite shoppers to mark organic preferences once and then place those items at the top of each new list, and a reorder feature could make the organic choice the habitual one. The most promising segment for all of these efforts is the occasional buyer, who already holds a favorable attitude and some intention, since committed buyers act already and indifferent consumers lack the intention to begin with.

These implications carry an ethical obligation. Because organic food is often marketed with claims about safety and health that consumers cannot verify for themselves, the temptation to overstate is real. Paul tells the church to put away falsehood and speak truthfully, since believers belong to one body (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Ephesians 4:25). For a marketer, that means describing what organic certification does and does not guarantee, avoiding fear-based messages about conventional food, and respecting the shopper who chooses not to pay a premium. A marketing program built on truthful claims may also serve the industry better over time, since consumer doubt about labels is one of the barriers the research identifies.

Conclusion

The theory of planned behavior explains a great deal about why consumers intend to buy organic food. Attitude is its strongest predictor in this market, and adding moral attitudes, emotions and self-identity improves its account further. The theory explains much less about why intentions fail, and the research points to doubt and low availability before intention and to vague plans, limited control, the shopping situation and habit after it. These findings answer the paper's two questions and support its thesis. For marketers, they suggest a sequence of interventions, from meaning-based messages to shelf placement to planning tools. For researchers, the most important gap is the shortage of studies that observe actual purchases, for instance through loyalty card data or online orders, rather than relying on what consumers say they did. Until that gap is filled, the field will know more about what organic shoppers intend than about what they buy.

References

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