Research and assessment of competitive capability of ecologically safe products in the conditions of digital economy

Abstract

Development of the market of organic products over the Internet requires a complex study of the competitive capability of ecologically safe products sold in the conditions of forming the digital economy. In this work we studied regular customers of 54 internet-shops selling organic products. The initial data was obtained through questioning internet-shops customers, with the coverage of 470 respondents. The results were processed with the use of economic-mathematical and statistical analysis methods in the SPSS environment. During the research, we carried out a segmentation monitoring, defined social-demographic criteria to group the sampling survey, then we carried out a factor-related analysis and estimated nine prevailing factors influencing the choice made by the customer as he/she buys ecologically safe products over the Internet. The most relevant factors for customers are: the price, the markings and the shelf life. The integral coefficient of competitive capability with consideration of all the factors is equal to 6.5 in the Harrington’s scale, which means a high level of competitive capability of ecologically safe products in the conditions of forming the digital economy. The main problem is confirmation of compliance of this kind of products by applying the corresponding cryptographic marking.