Understanding consumers’ intentions to purchase green products in the social media marketing context

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to observe consumers’ attitudes toward and intentions to purchase green products on social media and to explore the relationships among social media marketing, perceived consumer effectiveness (PCE), product knowledge, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, price consciousness and attitudes toward and intentions to purchase green products. In addition, this research attempts to further understand these relationships in different consumer groups. Design/methodology/approach A questionnaire survey method was used to collect data from consumers in China. The Amos 22.0 software package was used to conduct the data analysis. Findings The empirical results suggest that attitude, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control positively affect purchase intentions, while price consciousness negatively affects purchase intentions. Product knowledge positively affects consumers’ attitudes and purchase intentions, and PCE positively affects consumers’ attitudes. As expected, social media marketing positively affects subjective norms, product knowledge and PCE and negatively affects price consciousness. However, there is no significant relationship between PCE and purchase intentions. According to the results of multigroup structural equation modeling analysis, the effects differ significantly among different consumer groups. Originality/value This study enriches the research about the factors that influence consumers’ purchases of green products in emerging countries in the social media marketing context.

What you see is meaningful: Does green advertising change the intentions of consumers to purchase eco‐labeled products?

“…Moreover, young consumers are more frequently exposed to the Internet and pay more attention to green advertising. Online questionnaire surveys allow researchers to use less time and effort to reach young target groups (Sun & Wang, 2020). The offline questionnaire survey has a high response rate and can ask open‐ended questions.…”

Participant or spectator? Comprehending the willingness of faculty to use intelligent tutoring systems in the artificial intelligence era

“…To reduce the social desirability bias, we assured the respondents that their personal information was strictly confidential (Ru, Wang, & Yan, 2018; Wang et al ., 2020). Meanwhile, we also told them that their responses would only be used for research purpose and the data would be kept private (Ru, Qin, & Wang, 2019; Shi, Wang, & Zhao, 2017; Sun & Wang, 2020).…”

Donation or Discount: Effect of Promotion Mode on Green Consumption Behavior

“…When consumers perceive eco-labels as credible, they would prefer products with an eco-label [ 9 ]. Similarly, consumer green advertising receptivity also positively affects their intention [ 15 ]. Zhou et al (2019) [ 10 ] found that when a carbon label was put on the right side, the intention for green products was higher.…”

“…For millennials, online product reviews and self-image congruence had an interplay effect on green consumption behavior [ 17 ]. Additionally, Sun (2020) [ 15 ] suggested that social media marketing positively affected subjective norms and product knowledge, which, in turn, increased purchase intention for green products. However, green advertising skepticism on social media may reduce this preference [ 16 ].…”

“…First, the current research advances our understanding of how to increase consumer purchase intention of green products. Although past research on green products has found some drivers of green product purchases [ 4 , 5 , 9 , 10 , 15 , 16 , 17 ], there is limited research on how to promote green products from the perspective of promotion mode. In addition, recent research has only explored the match between promotion mode and consumers’ self-construal tendency [ 12 ].…”