Who really buys organic?
The prime buyers of organic produce are not
softies who make their own yogurt and hum Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi"
("They paved Paradise and put up a parking lot").
The organic movement has been an easy butt for those in the media who prefer to dismiss its adherents as aging hippies, their progeny and those who have been raised on Pete Seeger and the spirit of Haight-Ashbury.
This [Hartman Group] report demonstrates they can no longer regard shoppers frequenting Whole Foods supermarkets, health-food stores and organic stands at farmers’ markets as a minority without influence who come from a well-heeled Wasp background.
It finds that consumers are driven to seek out organic produce by fear of the impact of additional hormones in food products on their children’s health.
Where in 2000 only 29 percent of customers frequented health and natural food stores to buy organic foods, now 49 percent are opting to shop in these. Sales of organic produce from general supermarkets have slipped from 63 percent in 2000 to 58 percent last year. But they have risen from 9 percent to 15 percent in supercenter and discount stores.
This news should warm the cockles of Wal-Mart’s heart. It told The New York Times Friday it wanted to democratize organic foods and will be selling it for only 10 percent more than non-organic foods.
It may be less encouraging to Whole Foods, whose price difference between what it terms ‘conventional’ and organic can fall between 20 and 30 percent higher.
However, its Chief Operating Officer Walter Robb staunchly told The Boston Globe recently, “I think that Wal-Mart doing this is an incredible endorsement and also shows the size of the market opportunity is even larger than we thought.”
The core of this topic probably should concern your own confidence in the stores where you shop for groceries. Having some experience repairing what Wal-Mart defines as acceptable in maintaining infrastructure — I wouldn’t buy bottled water from them.
My wife and I purchase a range of organic, natural, wild and/or conventional food products from two chain stores. One is Whole Foods. The other is Trader Joe’s — price competitive with your average supermarket chain. Our local farmers market is superb — and getting to know the farmer you’re buying fresh food from is incomparable.
I guess I’m saying that confidence in the quality of what I’m consuming is more important to me than saving the very last penny on every purchase. I wouldn’t own a crap computer or TV or camera either.
Posted: Wed - May 17, 2006 at 06:35 AM