Organic initiatives in Switzerland

This paper examines the relevance, environment, key-characteristics and success factors of organic marketing initiatives in Switzerland. Although most initiatives have a similar principal business idea (bundling, processing and/or collective marketing of organic primary products), they can be highly diverse with regard to their objectives, their business strategies and philosophy, as well as their size and economic power. The analysis of the market environment showed, that the market growth has slowed down. The direct economic impact of such initiatives on the region is rather marginal, but they can contribute to an improvement of soft development factors. The success of such project depends highly on the ability to build up necessary skills as well as if a key-person is able to push the project forward. New market potentials are seen in product and customer-specific marketing measures.