Food and Nutrition Sciences, 2014, 5, 1914-1925 Published Online October 2014 in SciRes. http://www.scirp.org/journal/fns http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/fns.2014.519203 How to cite this paper: Krömker, D. and Matthies, E. (2014) Differences between Occasional Organic and Regular Organic Food Consumers in Germany. Food and Nutrition Sciences, 5, 1914-1925. http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/fns.2014.519203 Differences between Occasional Organic and Regular Organic Food Consumers in Germany Dörthe Krömker 1 , Ellen Matthies 2 1 Clinical and Health Informatics Research Group, McGill University, Montreal, Canada 2 Institut für Psychologie, Otto-von-Guericke-Universität, Magdeburg, Germany Email: doerthe.kroemker@mcgill.ca , ellen.matthies@ovgu.de Received 19 August 2014; revised 5 September 2014; accepted 15 September 2014 Copyright © 2014 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Abstract It was the aim of this study to understand the differences between occasional organic consumers (OOC) and regular organic food consumers (ROC). A total of 571 consumers, interviewed directly after grocery shopping, were classified as conventional, occasional organic or regular organic consumers depending on the number of organically produced items bought. In order to gain en- compassing insights on the differences between the ROC and OOC consumer groups, a large set of psychological and socio-demographic factors was studied. They differ with respect to general food choice motives with OOC placing significantly less importance on animal welfare, food security, environmental protection and more importance on caloric content, convenience and price com- pared to ROC; with respect to beliefs about the consequences of organic food consumption OOC expect greater expense, less choice, no increase in vitamins and no improvement in taste com- pared to ROC, and finally OOC show a less positive attitude, weaker social norms and lower inten- tions of buying organic food regularly in the future and give a lower importance in their lives to protection of the environment. OOC finally prefer different grocery stores and use a larger variety of stores than ROC. Keywords Food Choice Motives, Attitudes, Personal Norm, Social Norm, Values, Retailer 1. Introduction The production of conventional food is associated with substantial negative impacts on the environment [1]. Therefore, the purchase of organic food can be understood as a contribution towards more sustainable produc-