Consumer Motivations and Cognitive Structures behind Quality Food Purchasing

The present paper presents a two stage research which aims to depict the motivations and cognitive structures of quality food consumers through the use of Means–End Chain (MEC) approach and laddering technique. Quality food entails both organic and local protected/traditional products. The first stage of the research involved a meta-analysis of published journal articles regarding the purported motivations and cognitive structures of consumers when purchasing quality food. The results show that the values and motivations identified by the various researches varied greatly, thus a thematic categorization followed in order to produce a useful conceptual framework for the analysis of quality food cognitive structures. In the second stage we validated the proposed conceptual framework through 50 laddering interviews. A discussion regarding the ability to organize the motivations and cognitive structures of various consumer groups in order to highlight and analyze shifts in consumer behaviour related to quality food, is provided.