Neighbourhood influences on organic buying

Abstract

Past studies have explained organic buying as a function of sociodemographic or attitudinal consumer's traits and/or as a result of marketing influences. However, in view of mounting evidence of social effects on sustainable consumption, this paper aims to enrich our understanding of the determinants of organic demand by introducing neighbourhood effects in buying models; in particular, using scanner data from Nielsen household panelists of 2012–2013, this study tests the influence on demand of both structural variables (collapsed into a factor labelled “neighbourhood class”) and geographical location of a household, controlling for the influence of household characteristics and other marketing-related influences (e.g., price). This paper concludes that structural class, rather than household class, positively influences organic milk purchasing. It also shows that relative class can also explain the likelihood of organic buying.