The Gateway Product To The Organic Market

Researchers at the Aarhus University in Denmark, recently sought to investigate the consumer habits of those who purchase organic food items when they go grocery shopping. Their results on the shopping habits of thousands of households helped them to uncover some realities about the average consumer who tends to opt for organic items.

They discovered that organic consumers are likely to start out with milk as their first product, and that they would increasingly incorporate more organic items into their diet as time goes on. There has been previous mention of this pattern and reference to it as being an 'organic staircase,' but the researchers from this study describe it as more of an escalator shopping behavior pattern.

They say that once someone has made that first organic milk purchase, they are unlikely to stop purchasing organic items and they will likely broaden those items and purchase even more organic ones in the future.

They were provided their data for the study from the Danish supermarket giant known as Coop Denmark. They analyzed the shopping habits for those households over a period of almost two years, 20 months, and the data included details from roughly 10,000 households.

The organic market continues to see healthy growth and the global market for organic items is expected to see at least a 16 percent increase by 2020.

Millions of consumers continue to opt for organic when they go to the grocery store and more stores are choosing to broaden their selections and incorporate organic into the aisles and freezers.

With the uptick in preference for organic items at the store, there has also been many stories that have come out trying to negate the quality of organic items. And many have suggested that there isn't any difference to organic and non-organic grocery items.

But organic shoppers are not swaying from their habits, despite these allegations that they might be making a foolish decision to pay a higher price for something that isn't any more nutritionally beneficial to them than a non-organic item would be.

Researchers don't know exactly why that might be, but they assume that it might have something to do with shoppers connecting the organic preference with who they are. That they might see and connect their act of purchasing organic items with being connected to their perception of morality.

Popularity for organic products continues to see such tremendous growth in the US; allegedly organic suppliers have been struggling to keep up with the demand as of late.

In 2016 organic food sales were around $47 billion and for the organic food sales in the US it's produce that makes up roughly half of the market--40 percent.

Costco continues to be the biggest seller of organic products in the US right now, but there are many others out there as far as competition goes. There are also thousands of local farmers markets scattered around the country, and a number of new apps coming out that help to connect farmers with consumers; providing them a platform to sell their organic produce and dairy products.

Right now most of the sales for organic food items are taking place in California, they've got an organic market estimated to be around $2.9 billion.

Despite milk being the most likely gateway entry item for organic shoppers in Denmark, that might not be the case for other areas. It's also been suggested that packaged salads and organic produce are gateway items; in the US we can see that produce makes up a great deal of the organic sales.