Antecedents Affecting Purchase Intention of Green Skincare Products: A Case Study in Vietnam

The study aims to investigate the antecedents affecting purchase intention in the category of green skincare products. Many studies have used the theory of planned behavior to investigate factors affecting intention to purchase products in general. This paper not only retests the influences of attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control on the intention to buy eco-friendly skincare products but also suggests a new antecedent - environment knowledge of purchase intention. More importantly, this study is the first to propose the moderating effect of country of origin and product knowledge on the relationship between attitude and purchase intention. This study employs a sample of 350 female customers from 18 to 39 years old in Ho Chi Minh City. The research applies the Multiple Linear Regression to analyze the proposed hypotheses in the conceptual framework and results in significant outcomes. The result shows that attitude is the most influential factor then, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control and environmental knowledge. Most importantly, the findings of this study suggest that product knowledge is found to moderate the effect of attitude on purchase intention. The finding of moderating effect is a new contribution to the literature and future research can be carried out to validate this result.