Competitive advantages of organic product features from the marketing perspective

Abstract

The research problem for this study is to provide an overview of competitive advantages of organic agricultural products over conventional agricultural products, and to demonstrate how constant and variable indicators of these advantages work. It is shown that distinguishing features of organic products are essential tools of competition, which are used to identify the difference between organic and conventional products. From the marketing perspective, organic products have been described in three dimensions: design intent of a product; real-life product; product with amplification. The author systematizes internal and external factors which influence how organic agro-food products have an impact on the target market. It is proved that in the process of organic farming, the main factors affecting the products’ properties are the agricultural production environment, soil quality, animal housing conditions, selection of species and varieties of agricultural crops, the level of organization of organic farming, expertise and skills of the agricultural producer.It has been established that in recent years organic production has been balancing on the verge of a rather unstable equilibrium, which, along with purely economic factors (first of all, market conditions), can be destabilized by any serious cataclysm, such as drought, severe frosts, abundant and prolonged precipitation. Adaptation to the climate change requires introducing new management methods and systemic changes in marketing strategies from all agricultural producers as well as organic food chains. Achieving these objectives is possible provided that producers of organic agricultural products use the existing practices and expertise efficiently and invest to innovations to ensure sustainable productivity of agricultural plants and animals for the production of organic products with high qualitative properties.