The role of valuing characteristics when purchasing different categories of organic products

Zbog sve veće brige ljudi za vlastito zdravlje i okoliš, povećava se potražnja za ekološkim proizvodima, osobito prehrambenim. Svaki proizvod ima određene karakteristike (čimbenike) temeljem kojih će biti ili neće biti odabran od strane kupca. Neke od karakteristika su: cijena, kvaliteta, marka, zemlja podrijetla i izgled ambalaže. Osnovni cilj ovog rada bio je istražiti stupanj važnosti tih karakteristika kod kupovine različitih kategorija ekoloških prehrambenih proizvoda (svježe voće i povrće, mahunarke i žitarice, mlijeko i mliječni proizvodi, meso i riba, pekarski proizvodi). Istraživanje je provedeno metodom online ankete, na prigodnom uzorku od 609 ispitanika. Rezultati istraživanja ukazuju na to kako je kvaliteta najvažnija karakteristika proizvoda pri kupovini ekoloških prehrambenih proizvoda, a drugo mjesto zauzela je zemlja podrijetla koja ujedno i reflektira kvalitetu.As the people are more concerned for their own health and environment, the demand for organic products, especially organic food products, is increasing. Every product has its own certain characteristics (features) based on which it will be (or will not be) selected and purchased by the customer. These characteristics involve: price, quality, brand, country of origin, package appearance. Therefore, the main goal of this thesis was to investigate the degree of importance of these characteristics when buying different types of organic food products (fresh fruits and vegetables, legumes and cereals, milk and dairy products, meat and fish, bakery products). The research was conducted via online survey on a convenience sample of 609 respondents. The results of this research indicate that quality is the most important product characteristic when purchasing organic food products, while the country of origin is the second most important characteristic, which also reflects quality