“Consuming organic food just feels right:” A discursive psychology of how consumers make sense organic foods beyond the reason-intuition distinction

Abstract

This research uses a discursive psychology and social constructionist approach to examine how organic food patrons think about, experience, and make sense of the organic label as a “boundary concept.” Based on data from 30 in-depth interviews with self-identified organic food consumers, emic and etic coding of consumer narratives reveals the socially constitutive nature of organic food practices. Despite organic food consumers’ understanding of what organic means, their meaning-making process derives from a certain kind of nostalgia for their childhood meal experience and upbringing, family values, because “it tastes better,” and “just feels right.” While consumer knowledge aligns with the analytical sensemaking system, the second group of factors is associated with the experiential system. Hence, leveraging nostalgia appeals in organic food advertising holds promise for mainstreaming organic food consumption practices in marketing contexts such as the U.S., where environmental attitudes are associated with political ideologies and thus polarizing.