Drivers of organic food purchase intentions in mainland China - evaluating potential customers' attitudes, demographics and segmentation

This research aims to investigate the important attitudes, demographics and segmentation of potential consumers' purchase intentions of organic food in urban China. The survey instrument was designed based on validated measures and three focus group interviews. Data were collected at supermarkets in the major cities which yielded 935 usable responses. The 23 attributes that measured attitudes were factor analysed and five dimensions were generated. Of these, the strongest dimension was 'Certification' which accounted for 24.7% of the total variance of 58.4% explained by the five dimensions. This dimension included food safety, government regulations and correct labelling. Chinese consumers are highly concerned about food safety issues relating to personal health. The findings also revealed that gender, age and educational level had no significant relationship in influencing the purchase intentions. However, income, attitudes and pre-purchase intentions all demonstrated weak to moderate significant correlations with purchase intentions of organic food. Gender moderated the relationship between attitudes and purchase intentions. Finally, a cluster analysis was performed which generated three distinct clusters, which we named safety conscious, gastronomes and sceptics. The distinctive features of the profiles of these three clusters are discussed in the paper. The findings of this study have important implications to all stakeholders of the organic food industry, in particular to foreign firms that intend to export organic food to China.