Perceptual maps analysis for organic food consumers in China: a study on Shanghai consumers

Abstract

This survey provides an insight on Shanghai consumers’ perception of organic, aiming at understanding and representing in graphic form the network of mental associations that stems from the organic concept. To acquire, process and aggregate the individual networks it was used the “Brand concept mapping” methodology (Roedder, Loken, Kim, & Monga, 2006), while the data analysis was carried out using analytic procedures. The results achieved suggest that organic food is perceived as healthy, safe and costly. However, organic is not necessarily synonymous with natural product in China, also due to a poor translation of the term in the Chinese language that conveys the idea of a manufactured product. Moreover, the organic label compete strongly with the green food label in terms of image and positioning on the market, since they are easily associated and often confused.