Report on qualitative concept tests (D.6.2)

Summary

This report presents the findings of the qualitative concept tests, conducted as a part of WP6 of the SUMMER project. The main objective of the study is to explore consumers’ response to improved animal welfare standards in organic production systems. More specifically, the report intends to offer insights into how consumers perceive the production system, how the perception of the production system influences the perceived quality of the final products and the expectations people have from the final products.
The report starts with an introductory section, where the purpose and objectives of this study are explained. Moreover, short literature reviews of concept testing and animal welfare in food research are also included.
The methodology is described in the next section, which includes: an explanation of the choice of method, a description of the procedure used for conducting the focus groups, a description of the sampling method, as well as the interview guide and the stimuli used in the discussions.
The findings of qualitative studies are usually vast and difficult to summarise in few pages. In this report, the findings are presented separately for the three focus groups that were conducted, where participants were split into groups based on their organic food and organic meat purchase rates, as follows: regular organic food buyers; regular organic food buyers-occasional organic meat buyers; occasional organic food buyers-occasional and non-organic meat buyers.
A general overview the findings is included in the last section, where they are discussed and implications of the study are presented.