Consumer Purchase Intention Towards Organic Food; with Special Reference to Undergraduates in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Sri Lanka is a country rich with full of natural resources which can cater a considerable portion of ever-growing market demand for organic products in the World. Identifying this fact is important for the Sri Lankan food and beverage industry to focus on organic farming and supplying various products grown under ecological systems. Based on this the study was conducted to investigate the factors influencing on consumer purchase intention towards organic food in Sri Lanka with reference to Undergraduates. Based on extensive literature review, the study adopted factors such as attitude, health consciousness, consumer knowledge, environmental concern, perceived behavior control and subjective norms to assess the purchase intention of organic food products. The primary data were gathered using a structured questionnaire from a sample size of 111 and SPSS software with version 21.0 had been used to analyze the data collected. The results show that attitude is the most influential factor that influence on purchase intention of organic food in Sri Lanka. Insights from this study can be used to further expand the organic food producing markets as it contributes marketers to target and retain health conscious customers more effectively. Further research can use the same model to investigate the factors and to facilitate full understanding of the consumerdecision making process regarding organic produce while considering the tradeoffs that consumers make between values and product as well as consumer segmentation.