[Intention] to buy organic food products among norwegian consumers

Masteroppgave i økonomi og administrasjon - Universitetet i Agder 2012The purpose of this thesis is to examine the buying intention of the Norwegian consumers towards ecological or eco-labeled food products. What are the factors that are leading people to buy organic food and which one are the most important factors among consumers. The thesis is divided into four sections, Phenomena, Theory, Reality, and conclusion. Each section is interrelated with each other. In this thesis, data were collected from questionnaires and distributed among consumers who buy food. Before going to consumers it is important to know what theories and previous studies says about the purchase intentions towards organic food and what are the most important factors that need to be considered. After having such knowledge about the previous studies, now there are many theories that can be followed to study the intention of the consumer towards ecological food products. For this, few theories are used that can provide theoretical background for this study. The most important one is the theory of planned behavior by Ajizen Icek because this theory is the most famous for studying human action, and mostly focus on the intentions to perform some certain actions. Theory of decision making also provides us the process that took a person to make some certain decision. After having the theoretical base from theories and empirical studies to find out the most important factors or variables that can influence on the decision making process of consumers, now the questionnaires with the sample size of 259 was developed and distributed among young and older (age 18-Above than 56) people. Mainly the questionnaires will be distributed in the restaurants because it is much more convenient and much more diversified Several techniques were utilized to analyze the data. Multiple regression analysis, ANOVA, t-test and hierarchical multiple regression were used. The result shows that the proposed model shows 49.5% of the variance of intention to buy organic food. Furthermore, the result also shows that the only attitude towards buying organic food, perceived availability and health consciousness are significant predictors of intention to buy an organic product. Whereas, perceived price and subjective norm are significant predictors of actual purchase decision. Key words: Consumer behavior, organic food, Theory of planned behavior, survey, Norwa