Despite the negative effect of the global financial crisis the Czech market with organic food is growing rapidly. In the past ten years the consumption of organic food increases as well as its product line. The label bio covers almost every kind of food. There has been also an increase in awareness concerning the organic food and people start asking questions about the origin of the food. Organic food is no more the issue of a narrow group of consumers, but it is going mainstream now. The main goal of this thesis is to analyse the specificities of Czech market with organic food which will help the Jacoby Company to adapt its marketing strategy on Czech market with organic food and beverages. The main tools of the thesis are the research of the purchase behaviour of Czech customers and the research of competitive organic beverages in the main retail chaos in Czech republic.

This dissertation focuses on topics in areas of agricultural and food policy, international trade, agricultural markets and marketing. The dissertation is structured as three papers. The first paper, Chapter 1, evaluates the impact of agricultural trade policies. Imported shrimp, which comprises nearly ninety percent of all United States shrimp consumption, have become the subject of antidumping and countervailing duty investigations in the past decade. I estimate the import demand for shrimp in the United States from 1999-2014, using the Barten’s synthetic model. I test the hypothesis of possible structural breaks in the import demand introduced by various trade policies: antidumping/countervailing duty investigations and impositions, and import refusals due to safety and environmental issues. Results show that these import-restricting policies have significant effects on the import shrimp demand, indicating that the omission of them would lead to biased estimates. Chapter 2, the second paper, examines how the burden of state cigarette tax is divided between producers/retailers and consumers, by using the Nielsen store-level scanner data on cigarette prices from convenience stores over the period 2011–2012. Cigarette taxes were found more than fully passed through to retail prices on average, suggesting consumers pay excess burden and market power exists in the cigarette industry. Utilizing information on the attributes of cigarette products, we demonstrated that tax incidence varied by brand and package size: pass-through rates for premium brands and carton-packaged cigarettes are higher than those for discount brands and cigarettes in packs, respectively, indicating possibilities of different demand elasticities across product tiers. Chapter 3, the third paper, focuses on identifying the demographic characteristics of households buying organic coffee, by examining the factors that influence the probability that a consumer will buy organic coffee, and which factors affect the amount organic coffee purchased. Using nationally representative household level data from 55,470 households over the period of 2011 to 2013 (Nielsen Homescan), and a censored demand model, we find that economic and demographic factors play a crucial role in the household choice of purchasing organic coffee. Furthermore, households are less sensitive to own-price changes in the case of organic coffee versus conventional coffee.

This thesis deals with research in the use possibilities of organic food in kindergartens in the town of České Budějovice on two levels (management and parents).It was found out that some of the kindergartens are using organic food. The biggest barrier to the using of organic food in kindergartens is their price. Most parents are satisfied with the quality of food in their kindergartens. Furthermore it could be said, that the parents know organic food but it can?t be confirmed the hypothesis that says parents would welcome the use of organic food in kindergarten?s canteens. The results indicate that not all the parents are able to accept the minimum of price increase in meal at the kindergartens. In the end there are recommended some local organic food which could be appropriate for using in the kindergartens in the town of České Budějovice.