The Organic Food Market: Opportunities and Challenges - Organic Food and Agriculture: New Trends and Developments in the Social Sciences - page 70

food industry, the major forces shaping it, and the current market structure, as well as an
understanding of the challenges faced by the main players of the organic food industry.
Moreover, it will provide a detailed assessment of the actual situation in the OF distribution
system, i.e., superstores, specialty stores, and farmers' market. This will help to understand
the importance of the value delivery network in creating value added to the OF supply.
Hence, our objectives are:
i. Assessing the importance of the channels of distribution, labeling and certification
process and food mileage in the organic food market.
ii. Determining OF consumers' purchasing behaviour in terms of how OF consumers buy,
where they buy, their sources of information, their trust orientations, and the trusted
channels of distribution.
iii. Clustering OF consumers with regards to their psychographics.
6. Design and procedure
6.1 Design
To address the abovementioned objectives, a mixed design is needed. On one hand, we need
to assess the supply side situation by conducting personal in-depth interviews with organic
food producers, channel intermediaries, final retailers and certification bodies. On the other
hand, we need to survey organic food consumers to assess their consumption
behavior/patterns. For the supply side, in-depth interviews were conducted with store
managers of superstores, specialty stores, and farmers' markets (producers) in Thunder Bay,
Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal. Interviews were based on an interview guide and lasted
about 45 minutes to 1 hour. The guide probes various channels members, distributors, and
producers of OF to discuss the actual structure of their distribution channel, their marketing
strategies, and trust issues related to their distribution strategies. The interviews were
recorded, transcribed, coded, and analyzed by the researchers using content analysis (cf.
Kassarjian, 1977). Two separate judges coded the data.
For the demand side, a survey was administered to consumers in Thunder Bay and Ottawa.
The population targeted for this study is OF shoppers. For purpose of gaining a good
representation, respondents needed to fit within a specific profile. The idea was to select
randomly organic food consumers that make their purchase mainly in specialty stores,
grocery chains or local markets. Data was collected using two administration modes: in-
person and online (using coupons with the survey URL). This helped to balance the
proportion of consumers shopping in different channels of distribution.
6.2 Distribution interview guides
The first objective of this study was implemented using a qualitative design. A total of 42 in-
depth interviews were conducted in Winter 2011 in different Canadian cities (including
French and English speaking provinces). The objective is to determine and understand
current and new trends in the organic food industry, the distributors' perceptions of
consumers' concerns and level trust in organic food, and finally, how consumers' concerns
are addressed. The interview guide is composed of three main sections. The first section
deals with the structure of the channel of distribution while the second and third sections
deal with how suppliers perceive consumers' demand and concerns. This three-prong
interview guide helps to determine how distributors/suppliers manage similarities and