In recent years, discount grocery retailers have expanded their global reach and added to their traditional no-frills offerings to also cater to hedonic consumer needs. In addition to a larger product assortment and a more pleasant shopping experience, they now sell organic food, which commands a price premium compared to non-organic alternatives. To understand organic food in a discount setting, this study sets out to examine the factors that influence discount grocery shoppers’ purchase intention for organic food. To study this relationship, this paper tests several factors in a structural equation model, finding a positive relationship between hedonic shopping values, environmental concern, as well as health consciousness and the purchase intention for organic food. In our model, based on a US consumer survey (n = 394), price consciousness exhibited a direct and negative relationship with the purchase intention for organic food. Furthermore, this study found that that the impact of environmental concern, health consciousness, and hedonic shopping value is greater on the purchase intention of organic food than that of price consciousness, even in this discount setting. This study concludes by discussing these results and attempting to outline potential areas for future research, as well as managerial implications.

As the COVID-19 pandemic brings about sudden change in societies across the globe and likely heralds the start of a recession, we examine the pandemic’s impact on consumer food safety perceptions. Due to its origin, COVID-19, likely spurring from an animal-to-human transmission in the context of a wet market, may impact consumer food perceptions in similar ways to the avian flu (H5N1) and the swine flu (H1N1). We examine this effect by studying preferences for beef meat in a consumer survey in the United States (n = 999) using a choice-based experiment. We compare our findings to Lim et al. (2014), who elicited consumer beef willingness to pay (WTP). Additionally, we investigate the impact of the looming recession by analyzing several attributes and their effect on consumer preferences. Our findings suggest that food safety concerns have become more important. As a result, production standards and the country of origin have lost importance. Additionally, we show that the socioeconomic impact for some respondents impacts their shopping preferences. Finally, we outline potential areas for future research as well as managerial implications.