Increasing Demand for Pasture-Based Dairy: What Attributes and Images Do Consumers Want? - Re-Thinking Organic Food and Farming in a Changing World - page 125

customers approached the table voluntarily if they were interested in the poster
developed specifically to recruit consumers who drank milk for a study on milk
attributes. For electronic recruiting, researchers sent out an e-mail to a store's
customer listserv or used a Facebook announcement from the store, both which
invited participation in the study. Potential participants were instructed to contact
the researchers via email. The researchers then replied to their interest by setting up
an appointment to the focus group. Recruiting was performed during a variety of
days (weekdays, weekends) and times (morning, afternoon, evening) in an effort to
capture the full variability of demographics in potential shoppers.
Each focus group session was audio recorded and followed the same format
and sequence of question stimuli. Using crayons, participants were first asked to
“Please draw a milk label that represents attributes that you are looking for while
purchasing milk”. Crayons were specifically used to give the impression that this
was a fun project and the artwork itself was not being judged, but rather to encourage
creative generation of important points or attributes as the main goal. The second
portion of the focus group consisted of answering open-ended oral questions which
focused on the reasons they purchase their current milk product and opinions of
alternative milk products. Questions included 'What is the most important thing you
look for when you buy milk? Why?', 'What are your opinions about pasture-raised
or organic milk?' Prior to the latter question, we defined organic milk according to
the USDA definition (Agricultural Marketing Service 2009 ) and pasture-raised milk
(or pasture-grazed or simply pastured milk) as milk coming from cows that spend
most of their time outdoors in pasture (rather than in a barn) grazing on grasses and
forage for a significant amount of their food, rather than eating mixed feed rations.
The third portion of the focus group included showing the participants five
potential label images that were developed by a local graphic-artist (Fig. 7.1 ). Each
potential image contained two versions shown next to each other on a piece of paper,
one with a black and white cow (Holstein) and one with a brown cow (Jersey).
Participants were asked for their reaction and input regarding these potential labels.
Images were shown randomly at each focus group. Questions asked about each
image included 'What words come to mind when you see this image?', 'What do
you like or not like about this image?', 'Would you be interested in buying a product
with this label? Why or why not?' After all images had been examined, participants
were asked which label they liked best and why. Finally, consumers were asked to
complete a written survey that queried demographic information (such as age, race,
gender, income level, and education).
The audio tapes were transcribed verbatim by one researcher who was present at
all six focus group sessions. This same researcher then read and coded the transcripts
using standard procedures (Morgan and Krueger 1998 ). Emergent themes were
developed from the coding. The same researcher who transcribed the focus groups
also visually examined each of the participant hand-drawn images and generated
a list all components of the drawings in both the pictures represented and the
wording on the labels. Statistical analysis (SAS 9.2, SAS Institute, Cary, NC) was
used to generate means and standard deviations from the written questionnaires
(demographic information).