A Study on Consumer Demography and Preference towards Organic Food Products – Application of Discriminat Analysis

Abstract

Organic food products are popular across Europe and United States of America. Asia is not far behind with India being a prominent player. The concept of organic food products is not new to Indian farmers. However there is not much of a consumption taking place domestically despite the fact that India is one of the top ten players in the world when it comes to the number of farmers engaged in organic cultivation. This study was conducted to understand the discrepancy between preference and consumption amongst urban Indians in the city of Bangalore. The study covers both primary investigation and secondary literature review. Data was collected with the help of structured questionnaires and analyzed using descriptive statistics and discriminant analysis to arrive at a decision rule to help retailers classify customers. Majority of the respondents constituted male customers in the sample data when compared to females. Most of the respondents were less than 30 years of age followed by an older population above 50 years of age group. It was also observed that majority of the respondents in the sample data belonged to a monthly household income of 30,000 - 50,000 Rs. while the average spend per month belonged to the category of 500 - 1,000 Rs. To conclude, it is possible to arrive at a decision rule by using the above mentioned demographic characteristics of customers into either regular or non-regular users of organic food products.