Attitudes and intentions of consumers to pucrhase organic food

Consumer awareness and concerns for the environment have increased significantly and represents one of the major factors in consumer decision making. Recently, more and more attention is being directed towards environment friendly products that are presumed to be "green" or environment friendly, like organic food. Although many researches studying organic food consumption around the globe has been performed, less of academic researches has been conducted in Turkey, studying attitudes of young consumers towards organic food and revealing their purchase intentions. Segment of young consumers is important for investigation as soon as young generation represents the future of environmentalism and development of organic sector in future is dependent on them. Current research studies the consumption of organic food, provides analysis of organic food market around the globe, discovers consumers' attitudes and intentions to pucrhase organic food and reveals factors that influence consumers' decisions to buy organic food the most. Understanding consumer purchase intentions and factors that influence consumer organic food purchasing behavior is essential for organic product producers, suppliers, marketing specialists, policy makers and entrepreneurs selling organic food, for building and implementing successful marketing strategies and contributing to development and growth of organic sector in country. The quantitative approach, in particular a structured questionnaire was used as a main instrument for data collection in this study. In total 300 Turk and foreign university students were questioned. Data was analyzed through statistical software SPSS 16.0. According to the research findings, high concern of participnats about personal health and enviornment as well as enough knowledge about organic food influence their attitude and intention to purchase organic food. Attitude, in its turn affects intention to purchase organic food.