1. INTRODUCTION:

India is moving towards digitization; the ‘Digital India’ campaign of Government of India (GoI) focus that Government services are made available to citizens electronically by making the country digitally empowered in the field of technology. Along with this it ensures that the citizens are provided with the ability to fully exploit the digital technologies to empower themselves thereby ensuring universal digital literacy (DeitY, 2015). Thus digitization changes the way in which consumer access information and communicates with each other. It is vital that the marketers need to understand this change in order to meet the evolving and shifting consumer expectation and demand (Prepletaný, 2013).

According to Statista report (2016) the total number of internet users in India from June 2012 to June 2016 have increased from 137 million to 462 million. The internet penetration is soaring both in rural and urban India. The e-commerce industry in India has grown by 34%(CAGR) since 2009 to touch 16.4 billion USD in 2014 (Bijlani and Singh, 2015). This growth can be seen in the changing needs and shopping patterns of consumers (Verhoef, Lemon, Parasuraman, Roggeveen, Tsiros, and Schlesinger, 2009). The consumers are no longer entirely shopping online or offline; rather, a combined approach is undertaken to meet their needs. Books, apparel and accessories and electronics are the largest selling products through E-Tailing, constituting around 80% of product distribution. The increasing use of smart phones, tablets and internet broadband and 3G has led to developing a strong consumer base likely to increase further. Thus convenience and accessibility of wide range of brands make consumers prefer online shopping. At the present scenario, marketers can only be successful when they are able to provide their products by combining the physical and virtual world to satisfy the consumers whenever, wherever and however they need to shop (Nielsen, 2015). The markets for organic food products are growing across the world; fear toward the conventional food products is motivating individuals to buy organic food products (Aertsens, Verbeke, Mondelaers, and Huylenbroeck, 2009). However, price, consumer trust, availability, convenience etc plays a vital role in hindering consumers from buying organic food products (Magnusson, Arvola, Hursti, Åberg, and Sjödén, 2001; Chen, 2007; Shafiea and Denise, 2012). This is a comparative study which focuses on, with respect to other organic shop, how much VFPCK is able to capture the market through its digitization approach.

1.1. Background of VFPCK:

Vegetable and Fruit Promotion Council Keralam (VFPCK) is established in 2001 as the successor organization of Kerala Horticulture Development Programme (KHDP) which was funded by the European Union. As a public company, majority of its shares are in the hands of farmers and the Government followed by few financial institutions. Self Help Groups of farmers constitutes 50% of shares, Government of Kerala has 30% and other related institutions hold 20% of VFPCK’s shares. In the background of high pesticide content found in fruits and vegetables brought to Kerala from farms in Tamil Nadu and other neighboring states, in 2015, VFPCK started to promote organic vegetable cultivation across the state in a big way by making available quality seeds and bio fertilizers. Later, in the same year, VFPCK has been designated by the National Centre for Organic Farming as the regional agency for Kerala for certification of organic farm produce. This move has helped the farmers as well as consumers equally. For farmers, the organic certification process is costly and long drawn and most farmers find it difficult to get certified, now even though getting a produce certified as purely organic takes up to three years. In the first year, the produce being certified by the VFPCK will come under the label ‘Organic Green.’ For consumers, who have been purchasing organic fruits and vegetables by trusting the seller is now replaced with a certification.

1.2. VFPCK Process of Reaching Customers:

In order to reach the customers at their end VFPCK in collaboration with National Service Scheme, Cochin University of Science and Technology (CUSAT) have started a ‘Go Organic’ mission, through which they provides organic food products on every Thursdays. This mission of reaching customers at their work place made organic products easily accessible. Further, to simplify the buying process an online platform is provided where the customers can place order either through mobile or using personal computer at their convenience from Friday to Tuesday and they can collect their order after their working hours. Even though varieties of items are not available, they are able to provide it at a reasonable rate. The table 1 represents a comparative price rating.

Table 1: Price List of various organic and conventional products

S. No	Items	Price ₹/kg (Organic)	Price ₹/kg (VFPCK)	Price ₹ /kg (Conventional)
1	Banana Njali	₹45	₹40	₹50
2	Banana Nendran	₹65	₹65	₹60
3	Ivy Gourd	₹54	₹50	₹30
4	Bitter Gourd	₹72	₹55	₹40
5	Winter Melon	₹20	₹20	₹27
6	Lady Finger	₹37	₹35	₹31
7	Brinjal	₹45	₹40	₹34
8	Pumpkin	₹30	₹30	₹20
9	Coconut Oil	₹150	₹140/liter	₹110/liter
10	Beans	₹50	₹60	₹40
11	Chicken Egg	₹8/piece	₹8/piece	₹5/piece

Source: http://nss.cusat.ac.in/goorganic/home.php/ compiled from conventional stores

Thus the objectives of this study are firstly, to understand the impact of E-Taill selling of VFPCK’s organic food products in reducing the inconvenience and non availability factors; secondly, to understand the role of trust in selling organic food products; and finally, to propose a working model to reach out the consumers.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW AND HYPOTHESES DEVELOPMENT:

2.1. The concept of Trust leading to buying intention:

Dwyer and Oh (1987) defined trust as “a belief that no partner to the exchange will exploit the other's vulnerability” and Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman (1995) defined it as “the willingness of a party to be vulnerable to the actions of another party based on the expectation that the other will perform a particular action important to the trustor, irrespective of the ability to monitor or control that other party”. Thus in this study, we can operationalize trust as a belief which an individual has towards the organic claims made by the producers, labels/logo and other certifying agencies which will be fulfilled by the trustee. Numerous studies have identified trust as an important factor when consumers decide to buying or not buying organic food products (Krystallis and Chryssohoidis, 2005; Zanoli, 2004). As the attributes of organic food products cannot be identified even after buying or experiencing, it is very essential for the consumers to trust/believe in the claims made by the third party (Darby and Karni, 1973; Nelson, 1970). Gefen (2000) has confirmed in his study that trust can significantly influence consumers intention to buy. In addition to this direct effect, trust can also influence intention indirectly through attitude as stated in the theories such as the the Theory of Reasoned Action (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975) and Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1985). In this study reasercher also tries to understand whether consumer buying from VFPCK has more trust than other organic consumers. Thus following hyptheses are stated.

H1: Consumer’s trust toward organic food products has significant effect on their buying intention.

H1a: The relation between consumer’s trust and buying intention is mediated by attitude toward organic food products.

H2: Compare to other organic shops, the name VFPCK gives its consumer’s more trust in organic food products

2.2. The concept of availability as a moderator:

Hines, et al. (1986/87) have stated that, although individual factors have an influence on consumers buying, situational factors may interrupt the buying behavior. Thus even though consumers have positive attitude towards organic food products does not always lead to positive buying as various situation factors such as availability, price social pressure etc can inhibit the buying. As most of the consumers are pragmatic in nature, they prefer for a one stop shopping, which reduces their effort and time in buying (Hjelmar, 2011). Previous studies have emphasized the importance of availability and accessibility of organic food products which makes its convenient for organic buying (Krystallis and Chryssohoidis, 2005). Thus for this present study we define convenience organic food products as those which is capable of reducing the time and effort and those which are easily available. Hence following hypothesis is formulated:

H3: Availability moderates the relationship between consumers’ positive attitude toward organic food products and their buying intention.

3. METHODS:

Data were collected from the consumers who buy organic food products from VFPCK and also from another organic shop in Ernakulam district. A total of 200 valid samples were collected from these shops. Two methods were used to contact the respondents. Firstly, consumers were contacted directly at the point of purchase and those willing to participate were given out questionnaire to be filled. Secondly, data base of consumers were collected from the shop and they were contacted through phone. The data were collected during the period of September 2016 to December 2016.

Attitude and intention is measure using a three items scale (Ajzen, 2002). Seven point scales were used to measure the respondent’s attitude and intention to buy organic food products. Trust is measured using a three-items scale adaped from Krystallis and Chryssohoidis (2005).

4. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS:

Partial Least Square (PLS) method is used to test the hypotheses of this study. Before testing the hypotheses reliability and validity of the instrument is confirmed.

Table 2: Summary of Reflective Measurement model

Item Name	Loadings	Squared Loadings	Composite Reliability	Average Variance Extracted
Trust
T1	0.902	0.813	0.933	0.822
T2	0.893	0.797
T3	0.924	0.853
Availability
Av1	0.909	0.826	0.918	0.864
Av2	0.832	0.692
Av3	0.919	0.844
Attitude
AT1	0.924	0.853	0.917	0.787
AT2	0.906	0.821
AT3	0.829	0.687
Intention
I1	0.814	0.662	0.893	0.735
I2	0.889	0.790
I3	0.867	0.752

Unlike Cronbach’s alpha, value of ‘composite reliability’ is used to evaluate the inter item consistency. In social science research, acceptable level is above 0.70. In order to measure to what extent the items correlate with other items in the same construct (Convergent validity) the Average Variance Extracted (AVE) and the outer loading of the items is considered. An AVE value of 0.50 or above and an outer loading of 0.7 is required to confirm the convergent validity of the scale. Table 2 above summaries the reflective measurement model. Fornell-Larcker’s approach is used to analyze to what extent each construct is different from other construct (discriminant validity), in this we compared the square root of AVE value to the correlation of each construct. Table 3 below shows that highest value of correlation in each construct does not exceed the square root of the AVE values which clearly reflects the discriminant validity of the scale.

Table 3: Discriminant Validity

Variables	Mean	s.d	1	2	3	4
1.Trust	4.21	1.55	(.91)
2.Attitude	4.75	1.28	.52	(.88)
3.Intention	5.20	1.15	.68	.63	(.85)
4.Availability	5.12	1.17	.30	.12	.15	(.88)

N=200, Values in the parentheses represent the square root of the AVE value.

4.1. Testing the hypotheses:

After confirming the validity and reliability of the scale, testing of hypotheses is carried out. In order to test the first hypothesis which states that Consumer’s trust toward organic food products has significant effect on their buying intention, a simple linear regression analysis was performed which reveals that trust accounted for 47 percent of explained variance of consumer’s intention to buy organic food products. The standardized regression coefficient of the trust is significantly greater than zero (b=0.69, ρ<0.0001) and in the expected direction. Therefore H1 is supported. Further, to check the mediating role of attitude in influencing the relation between trust and consumer intention to buy organic food products, mediating variable attitude is introduced in the above simple linear regression model. From the figure 1 below, we can infer that, with the introduction of attitude as a mediating variable the standardized regression coefficient of direct relation has reduced its magnitude from b=0.69 to b=0.44, further R² value also increased which clearly represent the partial mediating role of attitude in this model, thus supporting the H1a.

Figure 1: Mediation Analysis

To test the second hypothesis which states that, ‘Compare to other organic shops, the name VFPCK gives its consumer’s more trust in organic food products’ the whole sample is split into two where separate analysis is carried out on samples collected from VFPCK and other organic shop (name not disclosed). From the analysis we can infer that trust is an important factor for buying organic food products, especially when organic food products fall in the category of credence goods. However, from the following figure 2 and 3, it is clear that consumers trust towards VFPCK is high compared to other organic shop. Thus we can conclude that consumers’ trust towards VFPCK organic products accounted for 74 percent of explained variance of consumer’s intention to buy organic food products while comparing it to other organic shop the explainability is only 46%.

Fig 2: Organic Shop

Fig3: VFPCK

Fig 4: Moderation Analysis

Further to test the moderation effect, endogenous variable availability is introduced into figure 1, the results confirmed that even though consumer’s attitude toward organic food products is positive their intention to buy organic food products is enhanced by the easy availability and accessibility of these organic shops. Thus accepting the hypothesis 3

5. CONCLUSION:

To summaries, we can conclude that trust toward third party such certification/logo, producers and sellers plays a major role in consumers intention to purchase organic food products. However, when the accessibility of these organic products becomes difficult, there is a high chance for consumers to buy conventional products which are easily available. Thus for confirming the regular supply of organic food products, adopting the working process of VFPCK can help the producers and sellers.

6. MANAGERIAL IMPLICATION AND FUTURE WORKING PROCESS MODEL ADOPTED FROM VFPCK:

Consumers who are in favour of buying organic food products always complained about non availability and inaccessibility of organic food products. Now with this approach put forward by VFPCK, which is an organization of farming community. It is able to reach out its customers directly, thereby reducing the intermediary cost. Apart from this, by introducing the online platform to place order, customers can place their orders at their convenience. To add on, instead of going for household shopping after working hours, they can pick up their order from the ‘Amenity Center’ at CUSAT where VFPCK has a stall. Thus this working process of VFPCK is very feasible and it can be spread to other universities, schools etc and also create small hubs all over Kerala where the pre-ordered items can be distributed. However, to make people aware about these hubs, making use of print, media and other social network sites is very essential.

To summaries, this study tried to bring forth the working process of VFPCK as a guideline to reach out more customers. Through this process wastage of our organic products can be reduced drastically and the farmers can reap the benefit directly. Following figure shows, how we can expand the working process of VFPCK to other areas and also how other shop keepers can follow the VFPCK model.

Fig 5: Working Model to Reach Out the Customers

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Received on 20.09.2017 Modified on 31.10.2017

Asian Journal of Management. 2018; 9(1):322-326.

DOI: 10.5958/2321-5763.2018.00049.5