Product Differentiation and Consumer Preferences for Sustainable Food

There is growing evidence that the current agri-food system is not sustainable, because major environmental and ethical issues challenge the global development. Against this complex background it becomes clear, that sustainable food is a global issue, relevant for individual consumers as well as for the society, for agri-food businesses and policy actors. From a consumers point of view sustainability is a credence attribute and comes on top of an already highly complex buying decision process that can be facilitated by third-party certification and labelling. Over the past decades a number of studies have explored the above mentioned topics. However, most of them chose very specific examples of sustainable food products such as organic or fair trade labelled products. Moreover, in most cases data collection took place in single industrialised countries. The ten individual research articles included in this dissertation offer unique insights into sustainable food consumption in industrialised and emerging countries as well as into the theory of food labelling. Four main research questions are addressed: 1. What do consumers expect from sustainable food? 2. How do organic food consumers in mature and emerging markets differ? 3. What characterises potential target groups for sustainable food and what hampers sustainable consumption? 4. How can sustainable food be successfully introduced to the market and communicated? The findings of this dissertation lead to several overall conclusions: If sustainable food is to be differentiated and communicated successfully on a global market a semiglobalised marketing strategy seems to be appropriate. Sustainable food should always be characterised by a comprehensive set of environmental, ethical and health attributes. From a consumers point of view credibility is of critical importance for any sustainability initiative. Only if consumers are convinced of personally making a difference towards sustainable development, they will be motivated to change their unsustainable consumption patterns. Therefore, it is essential, that sustainable food becomes an available and realisable choice. Overall, one needs to be aware of the fact that achieving sustainability is a long-term process which needs to be communicated transparently. Once, having started the process of becoming a sustainable part of the food supply chain it is important for all stakeholders to stay open and flexible with regard to new evidence, innovative ideas or emerging challenges and to engage in continuous dialogue. Future research must focus on questions i.e. like: What motivates decision makers in business and policy to invest in or contribute to a sustainable agri-food system? This calls for further unbiased global food research, transcending disciplinary and national boundaries