The study of consumption patterns and expectations of organic catering consumers in Taiwan

This report was presented at the UK Organic Research 2002 Conference. Organic catering is increasingly provided in public and private food services. In Taiwan, most organic catering is vegetarian and affiliated with organic food stores. These offer diners organic meals to make themselves competitive to attract target markets, and provide related information to improve consumers’ knowledge of organic foods and hopefully increase their consumption. Organic catering consumers’ knowledge of organic foods, attitudes toward consumption, and consumption behavior are all related. Consumption is affected by gender, marital status, age, religion, education, occupation, personal health, family health and expenditure allowance. Regular organic catering customers emphasize “balanced nutrition” and “certification or reliability of organic sources”. The obstacles to consumption for non-regular organic catering consumers are “too expensive” and “difficult to find”. Most organic catering consumers prefer the service styles “health-themed restaurant” and “located inside the organic food stores”