THE INTERDEPENDECY OF ECOLOGICAL AND HEALTH ISSUES IN THE CHOICE OF ORGANIC FOODS

In the last two decades the number of the studies on actual and potential consumerâ€(tm)s behavior toward the organic foods has been increased considerably. The main issues investigated by these studies are concentrated among themes like motivation, purchasing intention, barriers of the adoption, and their impact on the marketing strategy and operational tasks in an organization. Most of the studies in this field appeal to the one of the most influential behavioral intention model, namely to the theory of planned behavior. In an organic food context the researchers try to adopt this model including some specific aspects. In this paper, based on a brief literature review, we propose a conceptual model for the organic food buying intention. In our structure the two key purchasing drivers, the health and environmental concerns are interrelated, and the last one exert their impact on the buying decision trough the health attitude. This paper presents the argument for this proposed model. The proposed model, after testing it, could serve as a way of harmonizing the different attribute and benefit-related messages to the consumersâ€(tm) motivations.