Social Media, Customer Relationship Management, and Consumers' Organic Food Purchase Behavior

Why The Organic Food Industry?

First, a note on the growing organic food or ‘healthy eating trend.’ Since the 1960s, food consumption has transformed alongside the breakdown of mass-consumerism in its replacement by a multi-dimensional, dynamic society (Beharrell & Crockett, 1992). Within this transformed society, individuals are constantly searching for ways to express their personal and collective identities, values and beliefs. One way in which individuals are achieving this new found self-expression is through their healthy food choices. Food consumption has essentially become an ‘expression of personal identity and group affiliation within an increasingly fragmented social structure’ (Beharrell & Crockett, 1992: 5).