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The purpose of this paper is to examine intrinsic and extrinsic food quality characteristics and the relative importance placed on these characteristics by different consumer segments. Moreover, relationship between segments of consumers and consumption frequency of differentiated food products (traditional, functional and organic) was analysed.

A three-stage stratified random sampling approach was employed and data were collected via 500 face-to-face interviews conducted in respondents’ homes. A version of the Food Choice Questionnaire was used to examine the motives of consumers’ underlying food choices. The collected data were analysed by factor analysis followed by cluster analysis.

Four factors were identified: health and sensory characteristics, price and availability, body weight and digestion, and convenience. Resulting clusters were named as: healthy and tasty food lovers, convenient, concerned, and indifferent consumers. Differences were identified between the segments according to consumers’ frequency of consumption of the different types of food products.

The findings have impact implications for food producers and distributors in developing communication strategies for consumer segments with different attitudes and motives. The findings of this study not only contribute to the organic, traditional, and food with health claim literature, but also help industry, government, and consumer associations fully understand consumer perceptions of intrinsic and extrinsic foods characteristics and enhance consumers’ responses to the different types of food products.

The study represents one of the first assessments of the importance of food quality characteristics, segmentation, and consumption frequency of traditional, organic, and functional food products in Central and Eastern Europe.

The purpose of this paper is to discover profiles of organic food consumers in Lebanon by performing a market segmentation based on lifestyle and attitude variables and thus be able to propose appropriate marketing strategies for each market segment.

A survey, based on the use of closed-ended questionnaire, was addressed to 320 organic food consumers in the capital Beirut, in February and March 2014. Descriptive analysis, principal component analysis and cluster analysis (k-means method) were performed upon collected data.

Four clusters were obtained and labelled based on psychographic characteristics and willingness to pay for the most purchased organic products. “Localist” and “Health conscious” clusters were the largest proportion of the selected sample, thus these were the most critical to be addressed by specific marketing strategies, emphasising the combination of local and organic food and the healthy properties of organic products. “Rational” and “Irregular” cluster were relatively small groups, addressed by pricing and promotional strategies.

This is the first study attempting to segment organic food consumers into different categories in a developing country as Lebanon.

The purpose of this paper is to obtain empirical understanding of organic food buyers in the context of emergent organic food market (i.e. Bosnia and Herzegovina) by using a segmentation approach.

A self-administrated online survey was carried out among organic food buyers (n=202) using the snowball sampling technique. Measurement items were mainly adapted from the prior studies.

The authors analysed the heterogeneity of organic food buyers with latent class model. Four distinct latent classes (i.e. segments) of organic food buyers were identified. Those segments were named as enthusiastic social-seekers, enthusiastic moralists, hostile seldom shoppers, and hostile heavy shoppers.

Though the study was exploratory, the identified segments of organic food buyers can enhance our knowledge about differing characteristics of organic food buyers in the context of the country where the organic food industry is in the early stages of development. The findings of this study will give organic food producers and marketers a much better framework for making product, pricing, distribution and marketing communications decision. Moreover, the identification of organic food consumer profiles will provide an insight into how policymakers should tailor their public policy and strategies to expand the size of the organic food market.

The purpose of this paper is to set out to define lifestyle pattern framing behavior shared by traditional food products (TFP) and organic foods (OF) consumers to identify, if possible, a generic way to facilitate development of TFP and OF production in order to pave the road for more sustainable food production and consumption.

A convenience, non-probabilistic sample (n=800) was designed and customer survey was conducted in December 2013 in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Exploratory factor analysis and cluster analysis were performed to identify common lifestyle pattern shaping consumption of both products’ groups.

TFP and OF consumption patterns are driven by common lifestyle pattern defined by concern for welfare of all people, social equality and nature; and by consumers’ belief that food is a basis of their health, while food and cooking make an important part of family life.

This study shows that public and private promotion/marketing policies for OF and TFP need to be designed in a way that strongly emphasizes their symbolic meaning that elicits in consumers feeling of belonging to both local community and their family, and at the same time highlights the level of social responsibility of their producers. In addition, this study contributes to the body of knowledge in this area.

No similar study has been done to date that was focussed on identifying common combination of lifestyle factors that frame and drive customers’ tendency to purchase either TFP or OF products. This study offers a unique and valuable insight into topics and values around which a generic public or private promotional strategy for the two product groups would evolve, and which will decide effectiveness of any such strategy.

The aim of this article is to identify the issues of short food supply chains (SFSCs) in three countries of Central and Eastern Europe, i.e. Lithuania, Latvia and Poland, to compare the barriers to shortening food supply chains and to indicate business models for short supply chains.

Within the AgroBRIDGES project, the authors organized local co-creation workshops from August to September 2021 in 12 European regions and countries, engaging 150+ agrifood stakeholders of the project’s local communities.

The development potential of SFSCs in Lithuania, Latvia and Poland is high and seems to be growing every year. Currently, the development potential of SFSCs in Lithuania, Latvia and Poland is stimulated more by social trends than by public support. Traditional business models based on the distribution of food products through local and regional markets have a definitely diminishing potential.

Although this article covers an existing gap in the literature, it also has several limitations that may serve as an inspiration for future research. First, the results draw on a sample of agrifood value chain stakeholders in Lithuania, Latvia and Poland; hence, the findings might be industry specific. Therefore, future studies should explore this topic on wider target groups or different industries. Moreover, the method is qualitative and could be supplemented with additional quantitative analysis of similar tools or the experience of other agrifood companies from European countries.

The article seeks to build bridges between consumers and producers by supporting SFSCs through a systemic, holistic and multi-actor approach.

The study elaborates on the under-researched topic of SFSCs in the context of barriers to shortening food supply chains and business models for short supply chains in Lithuania, Latvia and Poland.

The purpose of the paper is to segment and profile the Indian shoppers in the context of organic foods in India. It proposes to use a healthy lifestyle (HL) as a segmenting variable and to use a factor-cluster analysis approach to achieve the same. The current study is expected to add a substantial base to the segmentation literature in marketing.

Food stores in Indian metropolitan city Chennai are sampled, and data is collected in the form of a mall intercept survey method. In total, 441 usable structured questionnaires are filled by the respondents which are subjected to suitable statistical analysis.

Three significantly different consumer segments emerged from the given sample of respondents, which shows uniqueness concerning consumer’s, HL features, demographics and the variables of the theory of planned behavior (TPB).

Clustering method used to segment the potential shoppers of organic foods is an exploratory technique only. It cannot be treated or generalized to the population like those of inferential techniques. The researcher suggested testing the same with a larger sample size and in a different context. It is limited to urban and suburban facets of the metropolitan city in India.

The study will be helpful to marketers and decision makers to target the potential organic foods consumers.

The search for quality food products is driven by cultural factors and behaviours referable to specific lifestyles which have changed greatly in recent years. This paper aims to investigate this issue by analyzing the attitudes, behaviours and knowledge concerning organic good in Italy.

This study considers the food choices of a large sample of Italians by analyzing the relations among their attitudes, behaviours and knowledge concerning organic food.

By means of the most recent Italian survey on the purchase of organic products, it was possible to identify various types of purchasing actors, verify their features and compare their preferences for conventional and organic products. The study demonstrates that their acceptance of organic products is strongly associated with behaviours that orientate different lifestyles among types of consumers. Moreover, a purchase simulation carried out on two kinds of food confirmed a marked willingness among consumers to accept higher costs in order to buy organic products.

This paper has proposed an approach that can be used to determine the relation between the consumption of organic products and behaviours indicative of specific lifestyles by identifying and comparing various types of purchasers.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the direction and strength of the influence of inherent factors of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) and to extend a model with the variable “uniqueness-seeking lifestyle” to better explain the variance in the intention to purchase organic food and the referent actual behaviour.

The authors empirically investigated what drives consumers to purchase organic food using structural equation modelling in AMOS. The research was based on an in-person survey carried out on a convenient sample of 411 primary household shoppers in Croatia.

The study was able to capture not only the influence of inherent factors in TPB and the extension variable (all proposed constructs were shown to have a significant positive influence on intention, and intention had a significant positive influence on actual behaviour), but also the indirect and mediation effects of the variables within the model, which explain 87 per cent of the variance in intention and 21 per cent of the variance in actual behaviour.

This study provides empirical evidence of the role that desired uniqueness plays in a situation involving the purchase of organic food and responds to the requests of many researchers to investigate beyond intention and to try to identify what influences actual behaviour. This study proposes a new way of measuring actual purchases by asking a respondent to consider their actual purchase in different product categories. Furthermore, this research proposes measuring intention as a latent variable that consists of the variable “willingness to pay more” as well as the “commitment” to the decision regardless of any perceived obstacles.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal factors underlying Polish consumers' food choices and particularly their perception of food quality attributes in relation to selected food products and points of sale and to reflect on the implication of shifting consumers' expectation towards food for the national food industry.

The paper provides a review of previous research results relevant for the problem analyzed – emphasizing the results from the authors' own research conducted in the years 2000‐2007 with the use of quantitative approach on representative in terms of gender, level of education, place of residence samples of Polish consumers.

Polish consumers are more and more concerned with various food quality attributes and particularly sensory properties, healthiness and safety. They differentiate between quality of foodstuffs offered in various points of sale and have favorable opinions about specialized shops and tend to perceive the quality of food bought in super and hypermarkets as inferior. Perception of food quality is dependent on the product being assessed, and foodstuffs addressed to particular groups such has infants and people facing health problems were perceived as having high quality, while food with additives, highly processed and genetically modified was assessed as having low quality.

The results have implications for the Polish food sector in terms of highlighting the aspects related to food quality that influence Polish consumers' food choices.

The paper provides a review of previous research results on Polish consumers relevant for the problem analyzed and give insights into Polish consumers' food choices and their perception of various quality cues. It is of value for the companies operating on the Polish food market and could be used for developing communication strategies and identification of future research areas.

The purpose of this paper is to disentangle the effect of life equilibrium on organic food purchase intentions through a consideration of the evaluation of intrinsic and extrinsic food quality attributes. Furthermore, the study examines the role of health consciousness in achieving life equilibrium.

The conceptual framework was developed based on previous research and tested through a quantitative study with end consumers. The hypothesized relationships were tested using structural equation modelling.

The results obtained from this study show that the perceived quality associated with the intrinsic attributes of organic food mediates a positive influence of life equilibrium on consumers’ organic food purchase intentions. The study also confirms that life equilibrium mediates the effects of health consciousness on the evaluation of intrinsic and extrinsic food quality attributes.

The theoretical contributions of the paper lie in uncovering the complex relationships that exist among health consciousness, life equilibrium, perceived organic food quality dimensions and purchase intentions and providing new evidence showing which perceived intrinsic organic food quality dimensions are relevant in shaping consumers’ purchase intentions.

The research results suggest that organic food managers should focus on developing stronger value propositions that are based more on intrinsic food quality characteristics and less on extrinsic ones.

This study recognizes the relevance of life equilibrium as a specific consumer lifestyle form, which drives organic food consumption through extrinsic and intrinsic food quality attributes.