Organic food culture
This trend in the way people are eating crosses many aspects of the social and cultural realm, such as market practices and media content when it comes to food, which has led to some novelties and changes in these fields.
These groups also provide the consumer with a set of recognizable signs that convey information about the source, means of production, ingredients, and nutritional values of their food.
Some research also states that people have a preference for buying organic food due to the fact that they believe it is stimulating the local economy.
The turn to local food may cover many different forms of agriculture, encompassing a variety of consumer motivations and giving rise to a wide range of political changes, much as the laissez-faire economics of the nineteenth century prompted various responses with resistance to contemporary globalization.
The debate over genetically modified food in Europe has brought interest groups, social movements, and NGOs to spread the importance of health, nutrition, and ecological consideration to legislative bodies.
The Consumer Union has successfully campaigned for introduction of regulations requiring labeling of products to ensure customers have control over the purity and quality of the food they purchase.
Since 1970 agricultural policy in EU member states has been taken over by the community; farmers and retailers have grown accustomed to thinking of food issues in political and environmental terms.
[citation needed] In countries like the UK, government policies focus regulations on informed consumer choice, via ingredient labeling.
The UK is the European country where the most vocal and radical resistance to new agricultural innovation can be found, due to the government's slow response to food scares.
In European societies, marketing and retailing agents provide ecological information to their customers, leading people to begin questioning large companies and government statements about food.
[11] Organic markets have revealed a huge potential and today they display a steady annual positive growth in all countries that invest in production.
[citation needed] The organic market in the EU increased by 7.4% in 2014, led by Germany with 7,910 million Euro retail sales and a growth rate of 4.8%, followed by France, UK and Italy.
[citation needed] Worldwide, the organic market is headed by the United States, which holds 43% of global retail sales, followed by EU (38%), China (6%), Canada (4%) and Switzerland (3%).
[12] 93% of organic foods are sold in regular or specialized supermarkets in the US and the remaining 7% come from alternate buying means, such as farmers markets.
Thus, the marketing approach toward this type of consumption is said to be more cognitive than behavioral, since its aim is primarily to understand how consumers link a product's traits with a healthful and socially conscious lifestyle.
Typically, consumers relate the taste, texture, and odor of the food to kinds of hedonistic achievements and the organic way of production is connected to a healthy lifestyle and thus wholesomeness, physical well-being, and eventually happiness and a general inner harmony.
In the case of organic products, trust plays a crucial role since, even if consumers want to act in a conscious, rational, and independent way, it can be difficult to know if what buyers see is what they get.
For this reason it is important for the consumers to rely on the USDA along with retailers and marketing gurus, who present themselves as guarantors that products have actually been produced according to organic farming practices.
They have recently gained popularity and exploited market segmentation in order to attract those customers who are engaged with the pursuit of a healthy diet.
[citation needed] Even if there are numerous factors influencing shopper behaviors, media plays a great role in decision making.
