Consumer Attitudes, Knowledge, and Behavior in the Russian Market for Organic Food

In the past few decades, the market for organic food has developed well in Western European countries andcomparable markets like the United States or Canada. While these markets are now approaching market saturation,other markets still have huge potential for growth and are therefore of special interest to export companies. In thispaper, we analyze the demands, knowledge, and expectations of the emerging market in Russia. It is welldocumented that the Russian market for organic food has had a much higher growth rate than Western markets inrecent years. According to the USDA, the Russian market grew significantly during the last years. The increase mightalso be due to changes in Russian consumers’ behavior. However, some challenges must be considered whenentering the Russian market with premium products: (1) a large number of low‐income consumers are not able topay for premium products, and (2) up until now, there have been no official organic labels available in Russia, and,therefore, it is likely that the Russian population lacks knowledge of what organic food is and which requirementsare connected to the organic production process. Considering these restrictions, we analyzed important factorsaffecting Russian consumers’ food choice on the one hand and their knowledge of organic food on the other. Thispaper presents results for one specific product (organic potatoes), which can be considered to be a typicalalternative to low‐priced, conventional products. A conjoint analysis was conducted in Saint Petersburg (n = 300) toinvestigate the importance of the buying attributes of organic potatoes. While the results are not representative ofthe whole Russian market, they show crucial differences in consumer attitudes compared to Western markets andconfirm that the average consumer knowledge about this product category remains low. These findings offervaluable information to those stakeholders of the supply chain who want to enter a market with high growth ratesbut obvious shortcomings.