Self‐determination, clean conscience, or social pressure? Underlying motivations for organic food consumption among young millennials

Abstract

The present world has led in individuals to become ever more interested in the consumption of organic food. Accordingly, companies are incorporating these worries in their managerial decisions by paying special attention to market segmentation. In this context, a relevant target audience is that conformed by young Millennials, a group defined by its growing purchase power, its intense influence on societies, but also by its inconsistency in terms of pro‐environmental behaviors. In order to understand the mechanisms that rule the human behavior, motivations emerge as fair predictors of sustainable products consumption. Therefore, the present study aims at analyzing the motivations that stimulate young Millennials to purchase organic food. Hence, it was conducted a survey study with a total sample of 378 college students. Afterwards, once executed a cluster analysis, four differentiated groups were highlighted: amotivated (23.02%), who have no intention to perform any sort of organic purchase; socially‐influenced (24.34%), motivated to purchase organic due to social acceptance; self‐determined (25.92%), mainly autonomous in their organic food consumption; and conscience‐affected (26.72%), who behave organic for self‐esteem. Although data reveal the existence of an overall organic concern among the sample, only self‐determined individuals may be prone to maintain their behaviors among time since the intrinsic motivation they show is higher than that of the other groups. These findings are of undeniable interest. The study of the motivational system of young Millennials will allow companies in the organic food sector to adjust their offer to the relevant target and achieve an enduring organic consumption.

Face consciousness and purchase intention of organic food: the moderating effect of purchase situation and advertising appeal

“…When a sense of collectivism is activated, consumers are more likely to be influenced by norms (such as how others expect them to act) rather than the attributes of the product itself (White and Simpson, 2013; Li, 2020; Sahelices et al , 2020), that is, they are more concerned about their relationship with others around them (Kopania, 2020). In this situation, the consumption of organic food is one of dependence, so the presence of others and altruistic advertising appeal may change consumers' organic food purchase intention.…”

“…From the altruistic perspective, buying organic food is an environmentally friendly behaviour. Considering that face consciousness is contextually relevant (Grant and Mayer, 2009), altruistic advertising appeal implies higher social expectations, based on which consumers may prefer to engage in more acceptable purchase behaviour by others, such as buying organic food (Sahelices et al , 2020). Thus, advertising appeal is taken as the other moderator to examine the boundary conditions of the relationship between face consciousness and organic food purchase intention.…”

Food Innovation Adoption and Organic Food Consumerism—A Cross National Study between Malaysia and Hungary

“…Social status was often found to be a determinant influencing people's decisions to consume green products rather than their more luxurious, non-green counterparts [65]. Similarly, Sahelices-Pinto et al [66] showed that the consumption of organic foods was influenced by both social factors and self-esteem, revealing the impact of organic consumption on boosting one's social identity. Thus, hypothetically, a positive relationship may be established between social lifestyle and consumers' intentions to purchase organic foods (Hypothesis 4 (H4)).…”

Nested relationships in pro‐environmental purchasing: A moderated mediation model

“…Although age has been utilised in cases of market segmentation (Ivanova et al, 2019), it has been of limited use for understanding consumer behaviour deeper (Parment, 2013). Recently, an increasing interest in generational analysis is observed (Sahelices‐Pinto et al, 2020). A generational cohort has been considered to be a group of individuals, who were born during a limited period of time and share some characteristics and historical experiences (Rindfleisch, 1994).…”

“…Consumers aged 18 to 34 form generation Y, also called the Millennials (Lu et al, 2013; Sahelices‐Pinto et al, 2020). Although economic crisis delayed Millennials' entrance to the workforce, there are claims that they are expected to have higher incomes in the future compared to previous generations (Kanchanapibul et al, 2014; Kotler et al, 2017; Muralidharan & Xue, 2016; Sahelices‐Pinto et al, 2020), at least in the Western and emerging economies. From the income point of view, Millennials are expected to constitute a consumer segment that might contribute to the growth of green consumption (Fischer et al, 2017).…”