Impact of Social Influence and Green Consumption Values on Purchase Intention of Organic Clothing: A Study on Collectivist Developing Economy

Abstract

The present study is an attempt to investigate the impact of green consumption values and social influence on purchase intention for organic clothing. Five hypotheses were developed with the support of relevant literature. These were tested with the help of primary data of young adult Indian consumers in the age group 20–40 years, collected through a structured questionnaire. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to test the hypotheses. The results of structural model revealed that attitude partially mediates the relationship of green consumption values and purchase intention for organic clothing. Further, social influence has no impact on attitude as well as purchase intention for organic clothing. The outcomes also indicated that for products at the introductory stages of the lifecycle, such as organic clothing, social influence does not play a vital role even in a collectivist culture. In such situations, consumers in a collectivist culture like India tend to exhibit individualistic behaviour. The results will be beneficial for designing market entry strategies for organic clothing brands targeting developing countries. The study also tries to extend our knowledge of understanding of departures from collectivistic behaviours in products which are in the introductory stages of the lifecycle in collectivist cultures.