Consumers in Spain Don't Appreciate Organic EVOO, Researchers Say

Researchers from the University of Jaén con­ducted a sur­vey among Spanish con­sumers in an attempt to explain the low lev­els of organic extra vir­gin olive oil con­sump­tion in the coun­try. They exam­ined the fac­tors that affect con­sumers choices and they sug­gested that exist­ing bar­ri­ers in the mar­ket are not by them­selves suf­fi­cient to jus­tify the sit­u­a­tion, but low con­sump­tion also has to do with how con­sumers value the prod­uct.

In a coun­try which is a global leader when it comes to land ded­i­cated to organic olive farm­ing, it is par­tic­u­larly strik­ing that con­sumers spend a mere 0.007 per­cent of their annual food bud­get (trans­lat­ing to an aver­age of $0.16) on organic extra vir­gin olive oil, the researchers noted. On top of that, most of the locally pro­duced OEVOO is shipped to mar­kets abroad.

To get some answers, the researchers first exam­ined the known mar­ket bar­ri­ers for con­sumers in buy­ing organic EVOO — price dif­fer­ence, the lack of aware­ness of organic foods, and the faulty dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem — and then they con­ducted a sur­vey by hand­ing out ques­tion­naires to col­lect data.

The dif­fer­ence in price between con­ven­tional and organic prod­ucts seems to be the biggest obsta­cle of all, not only in Spain but also in many other coun­tries. The lack of aware­ness pre­vents con­sumers from dis­tin­guish­ing the spe­cial attrib­utes of organic foods, while faulty dis­tri­b­u­tion means that organic food prod­ucts are not widely avail­able and easy to locate.

The research pointed out that the mar­ket bar­ri­ers were not the only cul­prits for low con­sump­tion. To get to the bot­tom of the prob­lem, a sur­vey was car­ried out in six dif­fer­ent cities of Spain to achieve geo­graph­i­cal dis­per­sion.

Manuela Vega Zamora, one of the researchers, spoke to Olive Oil Times about their work.

“A sur­vey was con­ducted of 800 urban olive oil buy­ers over 25 years of age and liv­ing in Spain. Data were col­lected through a struc­tured ques­tion­naire. The dif­fi­cul­ties or prob­lems that con­sumers face in the pur­chase of organic olive oil were mea­sured. First, we mea­sured the per­ceived dif­fi­cul­ties, and then we eval­u­ated whether these dif­fi­cul­ties really affect pur­chas­ing behav­ior.”

A total of 793 valid ques­tion­naires were col­lected and eval­u­ated. It was found that only 16 per­cent of urban con­sumers use organic EVOO (fre­quently or occa­sion­ally), while 84 per­cent were iden­ti­fied as non-con­sumers. Age, gen­der, and edu­ca­tion level of inter­vie­wees turned out to be of no sig­nif­i­cance.

The data analy­sis showed that both con­sumers and non-con­sumers had a clear per­cep­tion of the mar­ket bar­ri­ers. However, the answers of non-con­sumers did not clearly pin­point the mar­ket bar­ri­ers alone as the rea­son for not buy­ing. ​“The results show that a group of con­sumers does not buy the prod­uct, per­ceives dif­fi­cul­ties or lim­it­ing fac­tors, and yet does not give any clear indi­ca­tion that these dif­fi­cul­ties directly deter­mine the deci­sion not to pur­chase,” Zamora said.

After re-eval­u­at­ing the sur­vey data and focus­ing on spe­cific answers in the ques­tion­naires, the researchers reached a remark­able con­clu­sion: the real rea­son for the non-con­sumers boy­cott is that they sim­ply think that con­ven­tional extra vir­gin is good enough for them and they believe that the organic attribute makes no dif­fer­ence. In other words, the prob­lem is the prod­uct itself, where the term ​‘organic’ cre­ates no added value to it.

“We con­clude that this group of con­sumers sim­ply does not value the ​‘organic’ attribute highly enough and there­fore has no desire for or inter­est in organic EVOO,” Zamora explained. ​“We were very sur­prised because of the impor­tance of organic foods. Nevertheless, we are con­scious that con­ven­tional olive oil is very appre­ci­ated by Spanish con­sumers and we have other papers which show that the high appre­ci­a­tion of con­ven­tional olive oil is a bar­rier in the con­sump­tion of organic olive oil.”

The researchers argued that the low appre­ci­a­tion of organic EVOO is more dif­fi­cult to deal with than the exist­ing mar­ket bar­ri­ers since it is asso­ci­ated with per­sonal val­ues and prod­uct aware­ness.

Moreover, a change in con­sumers behav­ior is not to be seen in the near future, as Zamora noted: ​“We do not expect a change soon. We believe that this change will occur in the long term, as long as com­mu­ni­ca­tion cam­paigns are devel­oped to make the organic food more known and that con­sumers know exactly what means to be organic, as well as envi­ron­men­tal aware­ness cam­paigns. It is impor­tant that con­sumers be con­scious about how organic con­sump­tion con­tributes to the preser­va­tion of the envi­ron­ment. Consumers can pre­serve the envi­ron­ment not only through recy­cling but also with what they eat.”

On the other hand, the fact that the major­ity of the Spanish organic EVOO is exported is not really a prob­lem for Spanish pro­duc­ers, Zamora told us. ​“From an eco­nomic per­spec­tive, pro­duc­ers do not sus­tain a loss. In for­eign mar­kets it is a much more val­ued prod­uct than in Spain, there­fore con­sumers are will­ing to pay a much higher price. It is a healthy prod­uct and, in addi­tion, organic.”

The report sus­tained that pub­lic admin­is­tra­tive bod­ies and agents of the olive oil sec­tor want to increase con­sump­tion of organic food in Spain, and organic EVOO is of high pri­or­ity due to the impor­tance of organic olive grow­ing in rural areas of the coun­try.

The results of the sur­vey could be used in the design of dif­fer­ent strate­gies to boost demand of organic EVOO, focus­ing on lim­it­ing the mar­ket bar­ri­ers for its exist­ing con­sumers and on chang­ing social and envi­ron­men­tal aware­ness for non-con­sumers.

• False Barriers in the Purchase of Organic Foods. The Case of Extra Virgin Olive Oil in Spain


• Expenditure on food per capita