Professor Richard Shepherd

Professor of Psychology, University of Surrey and Project Co-ordinator, CONDOR

Growing the Organic Market

Although organic food is only a small part of the overall food market, it is a significant part of that market and certainly, in some countries will increase over the coming years.   Therefore, it is important to understand the drivers of that market. In terms of our particular project that meant looking at consumer views on organic food and what influences consumer’s choice as one of the main drivers of that market.

There are big differences between the countries of Europe.   In general, more Northern European, and in particular Scandinavian countries, tend to have a much more mature market which means that [organic foods] have a reasonably large market share, but also that market share is not really increasing and has now levelled off.   Whereas, if you go to Southern European countries, like Greece and Spain, then market share is much lower, but it is likely to increase in the coming years.

The European Union does have a policy to support sustainable agriculture, including organic production.   That includes both supporting agriculture itself and also research which will improve organic production and looking at how to increase the market for organic foods.     

There are eight countries involved in terms of academic partners in the CONDOR project.   What we did was to include [partners in] both Northern Europe, such as Scandinavian countries like Denmark and Sweden which have mature organic markets, and also to include [partners in] Southern European countries, like Greece and Spain, where the markets for organic foods are much less developed.

In addition to the eight academic partners in the project, we also have partners from industry and from NGOs who bring some insight into developments in the marketplace [to complement] the academic input.  

All these projects generate an enormous amount of data and an enormous amount of information.   What we mean to do now is two things.   First, some really quite detailed academic work in terms of trying to model and understand consumer decisions and consumer behaviour and that will be presented in the academic literature to other people working in the area.   But also [secondly] one of the aims is to take some of the more general findings and disseminate that to various stakeholders within the organic area including industry producers, NGOs and policymakers.

One of the things we included within the project was to look at both fresh organic food and also processed organic foods. The interest there was to see whether there was a difference in the way people thought about these kind of things and whether the way they made decisions about those different sorts of organic foods would differ.  

At one level, rather disappointingly, they don’t come out differently, but there are some important implications from that.   Although people have different beliefs about processed organic foods rather than fresh organic foods, none the less the way they make decisions about whether to consume organic foods or not doesn’t differ between the ‘fresh’ and the ‘processed’.   I think that does have some implications for manufacturers and retailers moving more into that processed organic market.

Now organic consumption is much more widespread, the difference between ‘organic’ and ‘non-organic’ consumers are not as profound as they were in the past.

The Organic movement certainly has a future, but it’s debatable how much market share it will actually achieve.   If you look at European markets, even in the most mature markets, it’s still only a relatively small percentage of overall [food] sales.   It’s debatable how much it can increase over 7, 8-10%, but nonetheless that is still a   significant percentage of both production and sales.

It’s critically important in growing any market, if we do not have an understanding of why consumers chose or do not chose organic foods then any efforts to try and increase that market are rather ‘blind’.   Whereas, if we have an understanding, for example, of what differentiates consumers from non-consumers, of what the real drivers are of consumption, in terms of consumer choice, then we can try and grow that market.

Richard Shepherd
is a Professor of Psychology and Co-Director of the Food, Consumer Behaviour and Health Research Centre at the University of Surrey, Guildford, UK. His research has centred on factors influencing human food choice and has included the application of psychological models of attitude and attitude change to food choice, the perception of risks associated with foods and risk communication. He currently leads the CONDOR project and UK projects on attitudes towards genomics and food risk communication, in addition to his involvement in a range of projects on aspects of consumer behaviour and risk perception.