Factors influencing organic food purchase in India - expert survey insights

Purpose - The paper aims to document the findings of an expert survey in the organic food category in India. It seeks to highlight the relative importance attached by the experts to key explanatory variables in the consumers' purchase process of organic food. It attempts to integrate with the relevant consumer survey findings published in India in recent times in organic food category. Design/methodology/approach - The list of experts was prepared by including regular and well-known speakers in different agri enclaves and summits and who are members of different food industry bodies. Experts were contacted through judgmental sampling method. Feedback on the expert questionnaires was collected from July to October 2007 from 33 highly knowledgeable senior experts primarily through face-to-face personal surveys and through e-mail surveys. Findings - Importance placed on health motivation has the highest average rating and is one of the lowest standard deviations among the explanatory variables in the expert survey. Experts also rate the importance of the three mentioned attitudes (about conviction about utility of organic food, reputation of store and certification process-related information), organic food-specific consumer innovativeness, organic food-specific consumer opinion leadership, word of mouth (WOM) (activity), WOM (praise) and affective commitment about the store to be high in the consumers' purchase process. Originality/value - The novelty of the paper lies in the fact that it addresses the key issues facing the organic food category in India from an expert survey point of view.