Juveniles’ organic food preferences and how parents deal with them

Abstract

According to recent research it can be assumed that expenditures for organic food in families with children are declining as children get older. For organic food marketing this raises the question which kind of changes in families’ organic food consumption appear over time and why they appear. For this purpose qualitative interviews with juveniles and parents were conducted and phenomenon-based relationship models designed. The phenomenon „parent’s dealing with changed food preferences of juvenile children“, which is presented here, provides an insight into juveniles’ demands regarding organic food products and parents’ strategies and actions to deal with these. Thereby sweets, salty food snacks and chocolate spreads turn out to be organic food products mainly rejected by juveniles. As main reason for rejection the criteria of taste can be identified. Dealing with their children’s preferences, parents follow the two strategies „making concessions“ and „not making concessions“. Product type, product attributes, consumption situation and price emerge as subjectively meaningful conditions for the interviewed parents. According to the results, marketing strategies for the organic food products concerned should mainly be targeted to juveniles’ demands on taste on the one hand and parents’ demands on ingredients on the other