Buying Behaviour of Herbal Cosmetics by Women Consumers : An Exploratory Study in Kolkata

Abstract

Executive SummarySince the concept of environmental consciousness has become a necessity to save the mankind, promoting consumption of green products is the need of hour, owing to the fact that green products are environment friendly or sustainable products and are organic in nature. It is evident that the feeling for the health of environment and consumers is being resulted in the emergence of the usage of green products at the cost of traditional or conventional products. However, the magnitude of usage of green products is much behind the ideal one to safeguard the consumers and environment at large. Thus stretching the incidence and depth of usage of green products is a must. In order to achieve the pious objective, it is necessary to know the factors which insist the users to go for the green products so that the same can be ventilated to the masses for extending the consumer base for the green products.On this backdrop, this study has been undertaken to collect responses from the green product users, specifically in cosmetic and food category in and around Kolkata to find out the significant factors, through factor analysis, which contribute for the popularity of the Green products. The study also tries to find out the impact of different psychographic variables with respect to popularity of green products. After identifying the factors, prioritization of the factors on the basis of the magnitude of their influences on consumers' preferences was undertaken with respect to both Cosmetic and Food products.The study also tries to establish whether there is any significant impact of demographic profile of the consumers on their preference towards green cosmetic and food products. Demographic profiles considered in this study are; age-group, gender, education, occupation, income and number of members in the household. In fact, the objective is to map demographic profile of 13 consumers (on the above mentioned facets) with their preference by way of applying one-way ANOVA for the data obtained. The findings so obtained will certainly lend a hand to contrive for stretching the incidence and depth of usage of green cosmetic and food products focusing on influential facets of demographic profile of the consumers.The findings so obtained will definitely help in augmenting the usage of green products and hence contribute to safeguard the health of consumers and environment at large. Keywords:Green Cosmetic products, Green Food products, Factors, Psychographic variables, Demographic variables, Kolkata. 14 Introduction OverviewFrom the last decade onwards people became more concerned about their health as a result of which they are using more of green products. Green products can be stated as having less of an impact on the environment and are less damaging to human health than conventional products, and hence are also called as sustainable or environment friendly products. Green products are produced from recycled components,(i.e., the decomposition of residues of food and food products instead of chemical fertilizers...

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