An Examination of Consumers’ Attitudes Towards Genetically Modified-Food: The Greek Case

This study aims to explore consumers’ buying attitudes towards Genetically Modified food products (GM Food) in Greece taking into consideration that Generations X and Y have an active role in purchasing decisions and are also included in the survey sample. Field interviews conducted in a randomly selected sample consisted of 540 consumers in autumn of 2017. Principal components analysis (PCA) was conducted in order to identify the factors that would affect people in purchasing GM Food. These factors are: (a) products’ quality and characteristics (b) curiosity, (c) packing and (d) low price. Furthermore, cluster and discriminant analysis identified four groups of consumers: (a) those are marketing orientated, (b) those who are interested in product’s quality and characteristics, (c) opportunists and (d) those who are interested in packing issues. Non parametric statistical bivariate techniques including chi-square analysis were performed to profile the identified groups of consumers regarding their demographic characteristics including age, education, marital status etc. This study indicates that even there is a potential market for GM food in Greece, Greek consumers are still skeptical towards these products. The relative stakeholders including agricultural producers, food retailers and wholesalers, local government etc. need to know the attitudes of consumers towards those products for their decision making process.