Consumer coping strategies: a study of consumers committed to eating local

Summary

This paper deals with consumer coping strategies when consumers experience difficulties in implementing an innovation. The particular setting for exploring this issue is a group of consumers in Michigan who are committed to eating local. The paper explores how these consumers cope or balance their commitment to eating local with the constraints they face on buying and preparing local food Following a literature review of coping strategy and consumer coping strategies in relation to innovations, the paper presents the results of three focus groups conducted with members of a Student Organic Farm, a food cooperative and a Slow Food Convivium. The consumers we interviewed mostly adopt problem-centred, confrontative strategies: they change their food-consumption habits including shopping, purchasing, cooking, storing and obviously, eating. None of these changes are easy to implement, and most require re-allocations of time as well as trade-offs to overcome time and cost barriers. In return, some of these consumers feel empowered. This study allows us to offer a working hypothesis that the process is dynamic: the more committed consumers are, the more they adopt problem-centred, confrontative strategies and forget more fatalist emotion-centred or avoidance strategies. These findings contribute to literature on consumers' coping strategies and suggest future research avenues.