Consumer Attitude and Behaviour towards Organic Food: Cross-cultural study of Turkey and Germany

Summary

Organic food market is very challenging in Europe and developing rapidly with
different rates between western and eastern part. Consumers have raised great interest to
healthy and tasty diet with high nutritional compounds, confidence in food safety,
environmental and animal welfare concern and also sustainability. This paper presents
cross-cultural results for organic food consumers in Turkey and Germany. Quantitative
data is collected by survey method consisting of structured questions which are only
targeted to organic consumers in both countries and analysed with SPPS 13 for
Windows statistical data package.
Results shows that, in Turkish consumers’ age is lower, household and children number
is higher and gender is more equally distributed than Germany. Similarly, both
consumers have high level of education and belonging to middle income groups. In
contrast, Germans have more experiences with organic food and buying frequency is
more than Turkey. Majority of the Turkish and German respondents thought that
organic food is healthy, contain high nutritional value and have positive image about
organic production methods. Certification as a compulsion is not well known among
Germans, whereas, Turkish people have more problems in label recognition.
Both in Germany and Turkey, supermarkets and organic retail shops will be the most
preferred places and fresh fruits and vegetables will maintain their importance in the
future market. Matured German market is not expecting big demand differences
between products, whereas, some product categories especially meat products will
burst-up in Turkish market. Cross-cultural consumer study shows that “heath” and
“supporting organic movement and sustainability” are similarly standing on the top
three places in the motivation list for Turkey and Germany, whereas high price and lack
of availability reported as ruling barriers but with different degree of importance.