As the cost of living and diet-related diseases increase every year, people start eating healthy and organic food to prevent those diet-related diseases like obesity, cardiovascular diseases, cancers, etc. In this paper, the researcher would like to highlight the factors that influence the purchase decision of consumers who decide to choose healthy and organic food when shopping. There are 4 factors, price, health concern, environmental concern and availability, that influence the intention to purchase organic food according to many researchers and previous research.
KEY WORDS: Organic food/ Health concern/ Price of organic food/ Environmental concern/ Availability of organic food. Quah and Tan (2010) defined organic food as a green product or a product produced in an environmentally friendly way that is safer, due to little or no use of pesticides and herbicides. They begin to consider more food choices and their benefits, leading to 20% growth in the organic food category each year.
From these figures, it is clear that the organic food category is too big for all companies to pass up and deny involvement in the competition race. Their research suggested that consumers' perception, the belief that organic food is healthier than conventional food and produce more environmentally friendly, can positively determine consumers' purchase intention. What are the factors that may affect consumer purchase intention for organic food among Thai people.
The population of this survey is defined as those who have experience buying organic food in the previous month.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Income and Purchase Intention of Organic Food
What they discovered makes sense because those on a tight budget won't be able to afford the premium price of organic food.
Concern for Health
Environmental Concern
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
- Population and Sample Selection
- Research Instrument
- Data Collection Methods
- Statistic Analysis and Presentation
- Measurement Values
To define the population of interest, a screening question is needed to exclude those who do not match our questionnaire or who do not have the necessary information. If the population you are interested in is not properly defined, it can lead to ineffective or misleading results during the data analysis process. After defining the relevant population, the sampling method must be applied because it will take an infinite amount of time and a huge amount of resources to collect information about the entire population unless the total number of populations is small enough.
Therefore, researchers must select a subset of those in the population of interest to conduct research and obtain information from. For this given research, the population of interest could be described as all Thais who have consumed organic food and have had previous experience of purchasing this food. In order to capture the level of importance and attitude of the respondents, we will use the questionnaire method.
Articles, magazines and books or other relevant literature published related to purchase intention and organic food and consumer behaviors will be adopted to search and develop alternatives and solutions to carry out this research. In this study, it is used to calculate and provide the frequency, percentage, mean or mean and standard deviation to give a researcher a broad picture of the characteristics of the sample. The collected data will be coded and entered into SPSS to perform a quantitative analysis in order to test the hypothesis and find the relationship between the two variables.
T-test and F-test at a significant level of 95% and above will be used to conduct this research to compare the means. Not only that, Multiple Regression and Pearson Correlation test, 95% and above significant level are also used to find correlation. To capture the level of agreement and disagreement from the respondents, Likert scales will be implemented in the questionnaire.
In this research, 5-point scale will be adopted to capture the sentiment of the respondents, instead of 4 or 7-point scale. From Nunnally and Bernstein's (1994) research, he suggested that 7-point scales scale only slightly better than 5-point scales. From this point, the researchers will use the 5-point scale to conduct the questionnaire to capture the attitude of the 50 respondents.
RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
Health care is the most important factor or reason for buying and eating organic food. Only two people or 4% of all respondents consider this factor as an important reason for buying organic food. They seem to prefer to buy organic foods, even though the prices of these foods are higher than conventional ones.
So it can be concluded that 54% or more than half of the total respondents are willing to buy organic food regardless of price. When asking respondents about the price of organic food, whether it is higher than conventional food or not. All in all, 86% of the respondents perceive that the price of organic food is higher than conventional food.
Women tend to perceive or think that organic food is more expensive than conventional food. If the price of organic food is not higher than the price of conventional food, the respondents will rather decide to buy and consume it than conventional food. And they will prefer to buy organic food than conventional food if the price of organic food is not so expensive, while the other 14% of the respondents do not agree with this.
The woman also expresses that if the price of organic food is not so high, they will buy it. When asked whether organic food is good for health or not, 78% of respondents agree or strongly agree with the statement. So we can explain that they do not see the benefits of organic food for the environment.
From the above table, about 60% of the total respondents agree with the statement that it is quite difficult and troublesome for them to find organic food nearby. Since most respondents choose to buy their organic food in the supermarket, as shown in table 4.3. Another 20% of respondents do not find it very difficult to find organic food nearby.
From the point of view of the respondents, it seems that the price is the most important factor which has an effect on the purchase intention of organic food. If producers can place organic foods near them more, it can influence them to buy and consume organic foods more.
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
From this research, the researcher wants to recommend to organic food producers or sellers that location is the most important factor. If it is available near their places, they will choose to buy more organic food. So, placing organic food in convenient stores or in a store near the residential area will help to overcome this problem.
Then marketer should promote the benefit of consuming organic food to one health, and then compare the price of organic food and conventional food there. Regarding the pricing strategy, if marketers target women, they should lower their price to match conventional food because women tend to think that the price of organic food is too high. Because of this point, many are willing to pay a premium just to buy and consume organic food.
In order for SMEs and individuals want to start selling organic food or promote its products. The easier they can find organic food near their place, the more likely they will decide to buy. Another recommendation is to place the organic food near any conventional food of the same type, so that consumers can immediately compare the price and quality of the products.
If the price of organic food is not so expensive, compared to conventional food next to them, they will decide to buy organic food.
I eat organic food for me and you': Egoistic and altruistic considerations in purchasing organic food and their implications for advertising strategists. Retrieved from http://www.nationmultimedia.com/business/Commerce-Ministry-determined-to-boost-growth-of-Th-30244330.html.
