In the context of regional co-operative food promotion product-specific quality standards and aspects of origin are promoted. This paper investigates the impact of these attributes with regard to consumers' purchasing decisions. For this purpose a qualitative consumer survey tries to identify purchasing motives for food, especially apples. The means-end-chain-theory builds the methodical background. In combination with the laddering technique, it offers an approach for unveiling interrelations among product attributes, consequences and value concepts. A means-end-chain is defined as a memory scheme representing a particular form of product knowledge based on perceived causal relationships between meanings at different levels of abstraction. The generated empirical data are applied to developing marketing strategies. Particularly considering the case of apples consequences can be derived for the configuration of origin and quality programs.
