The Consumption Choice of Organics: Store Formats, Prices, and Quality Perception –A Case of Dairy Products in the United States - Organic Food and Agriculture: New Trends and Developments in the Social Sciences - page 5

Fig. 1. The U.S. Organic Food Market, 1997-2009 (Organic Trade Association, 2007, 2009)

stores or other retail outlets. These purchase data include price, quantity, promotional
information, and product characteristics. One of the product characteristics contained in the
data is the identifier for organic products. For UPC-coded products, organic products can be
identified by the presence of the USDA organic seal or with organic-claim codes created by
A.C. Nielsen. For random-weight purchases, we use product descriptions to identify organic
products.

2005-06 2007-08

Mean St Dev Mean St Dev

Number of households 710 942

Number of shopping trips 161.34 101.80 137.83 86.75

Average spending per trip 23.06 24.67 18.40 20.44

Organic penetration rate (frequency) 1.20% 0.07 1.84% 0.10

Organic penetration rate (spending) 1.24% 0.08 1.93% 0.10

Household size 2.36 1.26 2.40 1.36

Income ($0000s) 6.33 3.64 6.86 4.12

Some college educated 87.9% 0.326 88.1% 0.324

Married 57.9% 0.494 58.0% 0.494

Preschool children (age <6) 5.8% 0.233 9.8% 0.297

School-age children (age 6-18) 21.2% 0.409 21.8% 0.413

Elderly (age >65) 22.5% 0.417 22.3% 0.417

Table 1. The Consumer Profile, 2005-2008