The past decade is witness to the paid economic growth through increasing consumers’ consumption worldwide. This is turn cause environmental deterioration through over-consumption and utilization of natural resources. However, environment problems are caused directly or and behavior of consumers (Test et al. , 2006). The impact of environment deterioration will be a plenty of environment pollution such as pollution of sea and rivers, noise and light pollution, global warming, air pollution, soil pollution and so forth. The concern for environmental protection is increasing around the globe.
It also causes degradation of fertility and threat on human population. This all environment problems are mainly and seriously impact on humans on natural systems. In recent years, this fact led to the consumers’ increased interest in making environmentally social purchases. More and more consumers have realized that their consumption activities will lead to environmental problems. Therefore, they have realized their consumption problem and they have try to translate their environmental concern into action (Gangue et al, 1991).
These environmental issues have become an integral aspect of marketing manager become more concerned with environmental issues. There are many firms have started to be socially responsible by developing green products and green services. In this competitive business environment, many companies have executed the concept of green marketing in order to create awareness of save the environment. In Malaysia, consumer’s green practice and knowledge is less than other Asian countries such as Korea, Japan and so forth. Furthermore, Malaysia consumers are less adopt on green purchasing.
There are number of reason that consumers are not intention on green purchasing such as income, lack of awareness, hard to change and so on. The Firms must understand extend of this potential market growth. How much consumers are unaware on these environment issues and reasons. The role played by the government in environmental protection is undeniable. In promoting sustainable consumption practices among Malaysian, the Malaysian government publicized various strategies to implement sustainable consumption and development.
To educate and foster environmental awareness and concern among the public, Malaysian government also opted for social advertising (Harmon et al. , 2005). The most significant factor affecting nature was not the official government policy but the public awareness on the environmental problems (Checksum, 1998). Many people have high ecological concern but have the sentiment that the preservation of the environment is the prime responsibility of the government (Canyon et al. , 2006). Therefore, the purpose of this empirical study is to examine Malaysia consumers’ attitude towards green purchasing.
In this paper,we examine four variables which have significant effect on consumer’s attitude towards green purchasing. The four variables consist of environmental concern, utilitarian benefits, environmental advertisement, and environmental marketing. Besides that, those variables are overfed consumer’s demographic, psychological, and behavioral perspectives. This paper is structured on a few parts. First, we review on the literature review to pertain the conceptual theories of variables follow by empirical finding reported in the past study.
Next, we develop a conceptual research framework and model. Thirdly, we developed research objective in order to solve the research problem. 2. 0 Literature review 2. 1 Environmental Concern as on its complicated and unstable nature (Chain and Luau, 2004). For instances, Crosby et al. (1981) defined it first as an intensely protective attitude towards the environment and later, as a general attitude which has an indirect influence on attitude via behavioral intent (Gill et al, 1986).
On the other hand, several studies assume that Environmental concern is synonymous with environmental attitude (Chain and Luau, 2004). Nowadays, many researchers (Schultz, 2000; Stem and Sites, 1994′ Senegal; Roberts and Bacon, 1997) assume that environmental concern is a concept with some sub-dimensions. Many empirical studies analyzing the direct empirical relationships between CE and attitude showed that this relation was low to moderate (Bamberger, 2003). However, some of researchers warmongering that higher environmental concern is more conscious on green marketing as well as green purchasing.
For example, according to Bang et al (2000), confirm in their study that consumers, who are more concerned about the environmental issues, they will express more willingness to pay higher prices for renewable energy than those who are less concerned. Another researcher also proves agree with this statement. According to Kim and Choc (2005) point out that it is much more probable that people who are highly concerned about environmental issues will purchase environmentally roundly products than those who are less concerned.
In order to studies the Malaysia consumer’s attitude, we selected environmental concerned as our independent variable. Based on the degree of consumer’s environment concern, we will get to know about consumer attitude on green purchase. 2. 2 Utilitarian benefits Besides the environmental concern, utilitarian benefits are also a key to studies how consumer perceived on green products. From previous research show that functionality of green product has affect consumer green adoption and behavioral. There is a relationship between product functionality and green purchase attitudes.
The product utilitarian benefits play a very important role in product development since they affect consumer product choices and they help marketers to satisfy consumer’ needs, wants and demand. For example, Rosen and De Plasterer (1998) investigate the relative importance of different green product attributes to consumer. Their study is useful in understanding how consumer perceived the green products. However, the authors only focus on green attributes and product values. Consumer spend money on particular product because of that product contain of specific usage or value.
In order to measure the consumer attitude on green purchasing, we should understand how consumer perceived on green product values and functionality. Nowadays, global environment problem is been highlighted by many institution and government. Some of consumer was aware about the environment problem. The objective of green advertisements is to influence consumers’ purchase behavior by encouraging them to buy products that do not harm the environment and to direct their attention to the positive consequences of their purchase behavior for them as well as the environment.
In order to improve green movement worldwide and with implemented environmental advertisements through printed media, internet, and public relation as green techniques for introducing their products to environmentally responsibility. Advertisement is also play as important communication tools to transfer message to consumer. Advertisement message have a power to influence consumer’ feeling and behavioral. According to Baldwin (1993), environmental advertisements help to form a consumer’s values and translate these values into the purchase of green products. There are the effectiveness of advertisement message to influence consumer’ attitude.
As stated by Chase and Smith (1992), environmental assuages in advertisements and product labeling was found to “sometimes” influence the purchasing decision of 70 percent of the respondent. Therefore, consumer behavior towards environmental advertisement as an important variable in determine consumer green purchasing attitude. 2. 4 Environmental Marketing Environmental marketing is similar to green marketing. Green, environmental and CEO-marketing are part of the new marketing approaches which do not Just refocus, adjust or enhance existing marketing thinking and practice.
According to the American Marketing Association, environmental marketing refers to the process of ling products and services based on their environmental benefits. According to Ginsberg & Bloom (2004), the first step is to gain rich understanding on consumer preferences towards green marketing I. E. , whether the development of product that has green attributes is better selling point to target consumers. There are various authors has proposed different models to develop strategy that includes green marketing grid (Grant, 2007,p. 0,59) and the green marketing strategy matrix (Ginsberg & Bloom, 2004). In order to understand consumer’s attitude, this study eave to study about consumer behavior towards green marketing. Whether consumer able to adapt on green marketing. To what extend consumers are perceive on green marketing activities. It is to study that how much consumer will demanding that industry improves the environmental performance of its products. Nowadays, consumers are more enlightened and especially in developed countries, they are even seeking for sustainable for their children. . 0 Problem Statement The current rapid growth in the economy and the patterns of consumers’ consumption and behavior worldwide are the main cause of environmental deterioration. As the environment continues to worsen, it has become a persistent public concern in the developed countries and has recently awakens developing countries to the green movement. During the very recent periods, it can be observed that the current environmental dreadful conditions are ever more menacing consumer health and wellbeing globally.
This study will investigate to what extend the consumer attitude in green purchasing, that eventually lead to purchase decision of consumers in Malaysia. The study of green purchasing has become one of the major current research topics as environmentalism has emerged as the hot issue of attitude will have direct impact on ecological problems (Anamosa, 5 2007). Therefore, this research has managed to spark the interest of many researchers in global, and similar research in Asia has started to gain momentum.
However, even though environmentalism has caught up in many Asia countries including Malaysia, the research involving green purchasing, green brand and consumer purchase behavior in Malaysia remained noticeably low. Research data that focus on Malaysian’ data is important as the economic condition, educational system and level of environmental consciousness among Malaysian is indeed different from hose in other countries, and will such differences perception towards environment issues, difference consumer behavior towards green marketing and purchase decision.
Most empirical studies related to green attitudes are mainly conducted in United States and other developed countries. Therefore, to what extend the consumers are concern about environmental in Asia countries, and more importantly to Malaysia. Consumer attitudes on the environment marketing and environmental advertisement towards the environment contributed significantly to their attitude on green purchasing. Consumer perception was the most important contributor to the attitude towards green purchasing. 4. Research Question This paper aims to contribute by investigating the consumer’s attitude towards green purchasing behavior among Malaysian. The specific research questions of the study are: 1 . What are the factors that affect the consumers’ attitudes toward green purchasing? 2. How the research data of economic condition, educational system and level of environmental consciousness among Malaysian influence the outcome of research topic green purchasing? 3. What are the differences among consumers’ perception toward traditional marketing and green marketing? . How the nonuser’s green purchasing decision influenced by the environmental concern? 5. How are attitudes of consumers toward green purchasing influence by environment marketing and environmental advertisement? 6. How significant of environmental concern, utilitarian benefits, environmental advertisement and environmental marketing toward green purchasing of Malaysian? 5. 0 Research Objectives The purpose of the study is to examine Malaysia consumer’s attitude towards green purchasing.
In particular, it also aims to explore consumer’s environment concern, utilization benefits, environmental advertisement, and environmental marketing that exact to green purchasing. There are few specific objectives need to be accomplished in this area of study. These specific objectives are showed in following: 1. To test consumer’s awareness towards green purchasing. 2. To test consumer’s purchasing influence in consumer lifestyle. 4. To identify the problems of green products faced by consumers. 5.
To examine the implementation of green purchase marketing influence consumer buying behavior. 6. 0 Research Framework 6. 1 Research Hypothesis There are four research hypotheses to test the significant of consumer’s attitude towards green purchasing. HI : To extend of consumer environment concern toward green purchasing attitude H2O: Perception of consumer’s utilitarian benefit towards green products HA: Consumer perception towards environmental advertisement influence green purchasing attitude HA: Consumer behavior towards environmental marketing influence green purchasing attitude 6. Theoretical framework Theoretical framework is a conceptual model of a theory developed to determine the relationships between independent variables and dependent variable. In the figure 1, there are four independent variables which are environmental concern, utilitarian infinite, environmental advertisement, and environmental marketing for determining the dependent variable which is consumer’s attitude towards green purchasing. 7. 0 Research Methodology 7. 1 Measure and Sample Measure For the data collection, the questionnaire is set created with Liker Scale method.
It requires the respondent to indicate a degree of agreement or disagreement with each of a series of statement about the stimulus objects. This is easier to do data analysis compare with other method to do the research. The questionnaire is composed of five sections. There are divided into two parts. The first is for collecting respondents’ personal details and the other four parts is to measure four different factors which include Environmental Concern, Utilitarian benefit, Environmental advertising and Environmental marketing.
Each of the factors was measured with four items. Characteristics of demographics were measured in the first section with 3 items and there are ages, gender and monthly income of the respondents. Sample The questionnaire use in this study was a softy questionnaire by using Google Survey. The softy questionnaire was used for two main reasons. First it is an easier way to fill in data by using Google survey, and the second which was more important that the survey was adapting the green behavior by reducing the use of papers in distributing collecting and analyzing the data.
The data was carried out in December 2012 administered to a sample of the people who has higher education and have fix monthly income. The survey is tested on certain area and they are divided at Cybercafé area, which include at MUM multimedia university and prima avenue restaurant, Cybercafé. The researchers were carrying the laptops and asking the respondents to fill up the questionnaires. A total 100 questionnaires were getting from the respondents at Cybercafé. The details of respondent demographic are showed below.
