An Analytical Assessment of the Variance Between Beliefs and Attitudes of Farmer’s Market Shopper in Dublin

Abstract

The dissertation has shown that higher quality of organic food predicts the strongest variance towards the attitude of farmer’s market shoppers in Dublin. The purpose of this study was to establish the strongest belief of farmer’s market shoppers towards organic food in Dublin, therefore five beliefs were tested. Furthermore, current data of farmer’s market shopper were gathered and the combination between willingness to pay, purchase frequency and consumer loyalty with attitude was analysed. For achieving these objectives the dissertation adopted an analytical and descriptive approach, which is positivistic by nature. The deductive and survey strategy was used in form of face-to-face questionnaires and online questionnaires. The questionnaires were planned to be done at ten different farmer’s markets in Dublin, due to the COVID-19 outbreak the author had to switch to an online questionnaire and was only able to visit one farmer’s market (Green door market). The end-result indicated that higher quality of organic food predicts the highest variance towards the attitude of the farmer’s market shopper. The study has shown that attitude and willingness to pay, purchase frequency and consumer loyalty are positively correlated. The author was able to observe that the farmer’s market shoppers have become younger and they prefer to buy vegetables and fruits but no change regarding the sex and purchase frequency was observable. The result contributed to the understanding of the consumer behaviour of organic food consumers. The weakness of the dissertation was that the author was collecting data only at one market and used two types of questionnaires. The desired sample size of 240 was not accomplished which would have led to a more accurate outcome of the dissertation. Regarding the certainty and generalization, all aspects were met by having a clearly stated target group with an acceptable sample size of 153, furthermore, the provided data showed an acceptable level of reliability and contributed to the overall understanding of the consumer behaviour of organic food consumers. Future studies might investigate which particular aspect of higher quality of organic food (food safety, taste and freshness) is valued the most by the organic food consumers/farmer’s market shoppers.