I Mean Green So i Eat Organic: Testing the Effect of Peer Pressure on the Purchase and Consumption of Organic Food

Abstract

Obesity is currently one of the most important health concerns in America, with roughly one-third of American adults now considered obese (Flegal et al., 2010), and unhealthy dietary habits are cited as one big reason for this societal malady. Consumers associate organic food with healthy and low-calorie nutrition (Schuldt and Schwarz 2010), although there is no empirical evidence that organic food has better nutrient quality compared to conventional food (Dangour et al. 2009). Consequently, the sale of organic food products in the United States has risen from approximately $1 billion in 1990 to nearly $25 billion in 2009 (OTA, 2010). So while organic food products are surely and steadily gaining acceptance among Americans, marketers are still grappling with the question of what would be effective strategies to market organic food products to customers.