Research on Factors Influencing Consumers' Purchase Intention to Organic Infant and Toddler Foods in China

Influenced by the 2008 melamine scandal and recent agricultural product safety issues, Chinese consumers' trust in domestically produced infant formula has remained consistently low. Against this backdrop, this paper, based on the Stimulus–Organism–Response (SOR) model, uses Information Attributes as external stimuli (Stimulus), Perceived Safety as the consumer's internal psychological state (Organism), and Purchase Intention as the behavioral response (Response) to explore the influence mechanisms of factors such as Information Credibility, Information Transparency, Information Verifiability, Cognition Level of organic infant and toddler foods, and Price Sensitivity on consumers' willingness to purchase organic infant formula. This study employed Literature Review and Questionnaire Survey methods, distributing questionnaires online to consumers in multiple cities across China, obtaining 123 valid samples. The study results indicate that information credibility, information transparency, and information verifiability can significantly improve consumers' perceived safety and further enhance their purchase intention, demonstrating that perceived safety plays a crucial role. The study also found that although consumers generally prefer organic infant formula, price premium remains a significant barrier to purchase, with most consumers only accepting price increases of no more than 50%. In contrast, simply increasing consumers' cognition level of organic infant and toddler foods has a relatively limited direct impact on purchase intention. Furthermore, there are significant differences in purchase intention among consumers with different demographic characteristics. Consumers with higher levels of education place greater emphasis on information transparency, while families with multiple children show a stronger purchasing tendency. Based on these findings, this paper recommends that companies further improve product information transparency, refine their traceability systems, optimize their pricing strategies, and implement targeted marketing to enhance consumers' trust in and purchase intention of domestically produced organic infant formula.