Understanding the barriers that discourage consumers from purchasing organic vegetables

Hazardous residues from herbicides, insecticides, and other chemicals in vegetables become a serious issue in these recent years since the issue is directly related to human’s life. As a result, organic vegetables have become more popular in Thailand’s market since it can solve the problem of chemical residues in vegetables. Nonetheless, there are some barriers that discourage people to purchase organic vegetables.A study to understand the barriers discouraging consumers from buying organic vegetables study is under the theme of societal issues and opportunities. This study will identify the factors that influence the decision-making process of the consumers in buying non-organic vegetables, the perception towards organic and non-organic vegetables, and barriers toward purchasing organic vegetables. The entrepreneurs can understand the barrier factors and be able to apply the findings for creating further marketing promotion and converting the non-organic vegetable shoppers into the organic vegetable shoppers.The research was conducted by using two research designs which are exploratory research and descriptive research by non-probability sampling. The exploratory design contained secondary data, observation, and 8 in-depth interviews in which the interviewees must be inorganic vegetables shopper. These methods helped to identify customers’ attitudes, behaviors, and barrier factors towards organic vegetables. The descriptive design was conducted by distributing 200 questionnaires from online survey. For data analysis, the researcher used Statistical Package Software for Social Science (SPSS). The statistical analysis used in this research include frequencies, independent t-test, one-way ANOVA, binary logistic regression, etc.The results showed the major barriers for purchasing organic vegetables are expensive price, unable to purchase in nearby shops, lack of product variety, and low understanding of difference between organic and inorganic vegetables. There are some influential factors that can stimulate organic vegetables purchase. Currently, consumers are asking for more product variety, high quality products and confidence in product that it does not contain chemical residues. These factors could benefit to consumers in terms of their money is worth spending for organic vegetables. Also, entrepreneurs could adapt these influential factors and studied the barriers for better managerial implementation.