The Organic Food Market: Opportunities and Challenges - Organic Food and Agriculture: New Trends and Developments in the Social Sciences - page 83

organic foods”, while regular OF consumers look for regular organic foods or at most local
organic foods. This is very important to know by marketers and decision makers as it
determines the real motives and reasons to buy OF and where to buy OF. Fair trade OF and
local OF require very short channels of distribution; final prices are high; and the target
market is small. Conversely, regular organic foods do not require short channels and are
sold using standard channels of distribution. The direct consequence is a fast growing and
profitable market segment using standard marketing tools.
10. Conclusion
Consumers' interest in organic food has exhibited continued growth for the past two
decades, which has attracted entrepreneurs and corporations seeing a big potential for this
industry. This led to the creation of standards and regulations to guide the OF industry.
There are clear challenges on both demand and supply sides. Consumers are becoming
more sophisticated in their purchasing decisions of OF, and companies are focusing on
supply chain management in order to ensure high quality, traceability, and supply
continuity. The OF industry also faces some other challenges: (i) maintaining and increasing
consumers' trust in the OF products and the OF industry in general, and (ii) facing
competition from other sustainability labels and initiatives. The OF industry and all its
stakeholders will have to elaborate strategic responses to these opportunities and
challenges. The results provide an insight into the structure of the organic food industry
based on studies conducted with suppliers and consumers of OF products. The increasing
number of OF consumers and the changes in organic product retailing still leads to an
important imbalance between supply and demand high operating costs as well as poor
supply reliability.
Our results also show that there are 3 types of OF consumers based usage rate, trusted
points of purchase, and support for the local economy and the environment. True organic
food consumers, or TOF, buy OF products frequently, trust almost all channels of
distributions, and are principle oriented. Conversely, sporadic OF consumers, or SOF, are
consumers who do not buy OF on a regular base. They trust all channels of distribution but
have neutral attitudes toward supporting the local economy and the environmental
friendliness of OF products. Lastly, inexperienced OF consumers, or IOF, are consumers who
consume OF products on a regular base but do not trust any channel of distribution in
particular but are principle-oriented consumers. All these market segments have different
consumption preferences and hence, trust. They use differently the existing channels of
distribution. When comparing the channels of distribution, it clearly appears that consumers
buying from short channels have specific motivations to buy organic foods that differ from
consumers buying from longer channels . This is directly related to the OF adoption process.
It is also important to note that when it comes to the most used channel of distribution, trust
orientations are the main cause of channels of distribution use. The most trusted channel of
distribution across all OF consumers is the organic food store, then health food stores, and
producer-to-consumer channel. When it comes to trust in organic labels, RC and non-RC
have different views in terms of credibility of organic labels, meaning of “organic”, and lack
of trust in the organic label claims. Moreover, non-RC show a higher degree of uncertainty
on all trust items in comparison to RC. Lastly, the organic claim itself still has a long way to
go and adding the sustainability benefit can only bring confusion to most OF consumers.
Having said this, suppliers clearly state that today what appears to be an important attribute