Oleg Mitriushkin

Oleg Mitriushkin is a PhD student and research associate at Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, Germany. He completed his master’s degree in International Management, Marketing, and Entrepreneurship at the same university and graduated with distinction.

For his master’s thesis, Oleg worked with Prof. Dr. Marcel Lichters at the Chair of Marketing to understand how food labeling can help encourage sustainable consumption. He focused on plant-based chocolate ice cream and compared three certifications found on the German market: vegan, organic, and eco-sourcing. Which labels make a product more appealing, and to whom?

Using Lighthouse Studio, he conducted a choice-based conjoint (CBC) study with 445 grocery shoppers in Germany. Participants chose between plant-based and dairy ice cream with different prices, ingredients, and labels. He used Hierarchical Bayes estimation and latent-class analysis to explore individual preferences and identify consumer groups, followed by willingness-to-pay analysis to estimate the value of adding each certification.

Organic certification showed the broadest positive pattern across groups, while the vegan seal was particularly relevant to a plant-preferring group comprising around one-fifth of the sample. By showing how certifications can better align with consumer preferences, the study highlights one pathway to encouraging more sustainable consumption choices.