A typology comparing male organic purchasers and male non-organic purchasers: Nutrition, health and buying behaviours

  • 15.03.2013
  • English Articles
  • Anette Cordts
  • Friederike Wittig
  • Birgit Schulze
  • Marianne Eisinger-Watzl
  • Thorsten Heuer
  • Achim Spiller
  • Ingrid Hoffmann

Peer-reviewed | Manuscript received: May 25, 2012 | Revision accepted: January 19, 2013

Men as organic purchasers are a large but generally neglected target group – 40 % of men in Germany who buy groceries say they buy organic products. However, little is known about the nutrition behaviour, lifestyle and attitudes of this group compared to female organic food consumers. This article fills these gaps based on data from the German National Nutrition Survey II (NVS II) by identifying, characterising and comparing the nutrition types of male purchasers and nonpurchasers of organic food.

Problem

With regards to purchasers of organic food, conclusions about purchasing behaviour are frequently transferred to nutrition behaviour. Thus, both analyses of household purchase data and surveys of attitudes and purchasing motives indicate that a high organic food purchase or consumption intensity is associated with higher consumption of fruit and vegetables as well as lower consumption of meat [1–11]. In studies that identified different types of consumers [3, 5–9], it is noticeable that when organic purchasers and non-organic purchasers (or consumers) are analysed together, the organic consumers are often concentrated in just a few types. Further to the aforementioned characteristics of their nutrition behaviour, the organic consumers are frequently distinguished from the other consumer groups by their positive attitudes towards health and ethical issues such as environmental conservation or Fair Trade [3, 5–9]. These typologies are based predominantly on attitudes and purchasing motives [1, 2, 5–9] or on organic purchasing behaviour [4, 10].

Summary

Typologies of purchasers and consumers of organic food are based on surveys on attitudes and purchasing motives or household panel data. The subjects of these studies are predominantly women or households. For men, a segmentation based on actual food consumption has so far never been conducted. In the present study, data from the German National Nutrition Survey (NVS II) are used to cluster nutrition types based on the consumption of fruit, vegetables and meat separately for male purchasers and non-purchasers of organic food. The identified nutrition types were then characterised regarding further aspects. For both, purchasers and non-purchasers of organic food, the typology reveals a distinct relationship between healthier food consumption and a higher importance attached to sustainability and health related criteria for food purchase. Organic buyers eat more fruits and vegetables and less meat, and value the above-mentioned criteria more highly than non-purchasers of organic food.

Keywords: NVS II, gender, organic purchaser, cluster analysis, typology, nutrition behaviour



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