Abstract
Romania’s organic market increasingly resembles its Western counterparts: a vegetarian diet, disease prevention through consumption of organic food produced according to specific standards, preferring quality over quantity—all relevant factors influencing purchasing behaviour. It is the task of consumerist organisations to educate consumers on the benefits of the above factors, a process influenced by social and cultural trends, experience, lifestyle, motivations and preferences. The market is attractive to domestic producers offering an increasing assortment of organic food types. This paper aims to highlight the most relevant features of the rapidly expanding Romanian organic market from the perspective of organic producers. To this effect, it reviews the literature dealing with the main factors influencing consumer behaviour and attitudes. The qualitative research among producers reveals strategic directions pursued in order to understand and adapt to market characteristics and dynamics. The results allow better understanding of organic consumers’ behaviour in the emerging markets and highlight strategies to increase market success. Healthy lifestyle, desire to protect the environment, product quality and attractive prices are all important factors determining consumption of organic products. Whilst aware of these factors, producers point to the lack of education for developing an organic mentality and identifying organic products, poor distribution of products and lack of financial support across the entire logistics chain.
Highlights
Economic globalization has enabled the interconnection of organizations all over the world and development of cooperation networks but has significantly fostered the spread of lifestyles, traditions and habits among consumers [1]
In order to study the main characteristics of Romania’s organic market from the perspective of organic producers, the authors conducted a qualitative piece of research by means of semi-structured, in-depth interviews among Romanian organic farming producers selling their products in the B2B and B2C organic market
One of the benefits of organic food is that it creates the perception that it is superior to conventional food
Summary
Economic globalization has enabled the interconnection of organizations all over the world and development of cooperation networks but has significantly fostered the spread of lifestyles, traditions and habits among consumers [1]. The modern consumer in the knowledge society [2] has full access to producers’ and distributors’ products, services and brand offerings, irrespective of their location. Much like their Western European peers, Romanian consumers place increasing importance on products made in accordance with the principles of environmental protection, which contribute to the preservation and/or reduction of resource consumption [3]. Whether for personal reasons or as a result of the influence of social media, friends and family, Romanians are using organic products more and more frequently and prefer retailers that implement a sustainable strategy [3,5]. Conventional producers face increased competition from organic producers, many more retailers selling organic foodstuff in the emerging market than in the past [7,8]
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