Do Grocery Store Personnel's Perceptions, Attitudes, and Knowledge Determine Availability of Organic Food Products?

This study uses a survey of grocery store personnel nationwide and a series of weighted least square regressions with hierarchically-structured sets of covariates to explore how retail personnel’s perception, attitude, and knowledge regarding organic foods are related to availability of organic foods. We find that, while store types remain an important determinant of store personnel’s attitudes as well as availability of organic food products, store personnel’s perceptions of lower barriers and higher customer demand have strong separate associations with greater availability of organic foods. Implications for retail personnel’s potential role in framing consumer choice and overall health disparity are discussed.