Market
The Evolving Organic Consumer
By Laurie Demeritt
Unless you’ve been out of the United
States for a few years, nearly anyone involved in the production and sale of organic products knows that the organic
marketplace continues to grow at double-digit
rates. In fact, the Organic Trade Association
(OTA) reported recently that U.S. organic
food sales have grown 17 to 21 percent annually since 1997. Compare that to 2 to 4 percent growth for total U.S. food sales during
the same period. While organic remains a
strong category and sales continue to grow,
every industry has periods of time when the
growth may slow or shift in some way, and it is
always wise to pay attention to these changes.
Figure 1. Organic Use, 2000, 2006, 2008
Use of organic foods or beverages in the past three months.
Base: All respondents. Source: Hartman Group Healthy Living Survey, Aug 2000 (n=4942); Hartman Group Organic
2006 Survey, Dec 2005 (n=2109); Hartman Group Organic
2008 Survey, Feb 2008 (n=2161).
The Hartman Group’s latest report, The
Many Faces of Organic 2008, shows that out of
2,161 U.S. adult consumers surveyed, the
number of consumers who said they had
bought organics in the “past few months” had
actually dropped by four percentage points,
from 73 percent in 2006 to 69 percent in
2008.
This is not to say that the organic market is
expiring—far from it.
Even in these recessionary times, there are
still cultural concerns for quality and health,
(especially for children, personal and family
welfare) and based on our consumer interviews we find that consumers resonate more
strongly today than ever before to fresh
organic categories offering the perceived benefits of being “free of” a wide variety of
suspected negatives (e.g., hormones, pesticides, genetic modifications, etc.). These
fresh organic categories include dairy, fruit,
vegetables, prepared foods, meats, breads and
juices. We find this to be especially true within
the “Core” of the organic market, composed
of consumers who are continuing to increase
their purchase and use of organics across a
wide variety of categories.
Participation in the World of Organics
Currently, over two-thirds (69 percent) of
U.S. adult consumers are part of the “World
of Organics,” or those who buy organic products at least occasionally. About 28 percent of
organic consumers (or about 19 percent of
the adult population) are regular (i.e., at least
weekly) organic users. Still, it is important to
remember that most organic users only buy
organics on an occasional basis, and compared to data from 2006, some changes have
taken place in organic food and beverage
usage in the United States. Since 2006, the
percentage of Americans using organics regularly (at least weekly) has shifted slightly
(though not a statistically significant change)
from 23 percent in 2006 to 19 percent in 2008
(Figure 2).
Based on ethnographic, linguistic analysis
