Impact of values on purchase intention of organic food among consumers in Pakistan

Abstract

People of Pakistan are facing critical environmental and health challenges. The objective of this research is to examine the correlation among Functional Value (FV), emotional value (EMV), social value (SV), epistemic value (EPV), conditional value (CV) and customer purchase intention (PI) in organic food market of Pakistan. Moreover, two moderating variables age & awareness were also used to check their influence on the relationship of all the predictors with purchase intention. It analyzes theory of consumption value (TCV) in food market to figure out the ways to increase the consumption of organic food. For this research, qualitative approach was used and targeted random people from the different cities of Pakistan to contribute in this study. Online survey questionnaire was used to collect data from the people of Pakistan. Data was collected from multiple cities, but the major response came from Karachi, Lahore, Faisalabad and Islamabad/Rawalpindi. It was a cross sectional study. The survey link was shared with approx. 500 people, and out of those 407 responses were recorded, in which 403 were qualified for the analysis. Except demographics, all items of questionnaire were measured on a scale of 5-point Likert scale. There were 3 hypotheses which were further divided into 5 each. First five hypothesis were developed to analyze the direct relationship between independent variables and dependent variables. Next 5 hypothesis were linked with moderating variable “age” and checked the effect of age on the relationship between independent variables and dependent variables. Last 5 hypothesis were linked with the moderating variable “awareness” and it has also checked the effect of awareness on the relationship between independent variables and dependent variable. The findings of the study showed that only functional value, emotional value and epistemic value developed a direct significant relationship with purchase intention of organic food in Pakistan. Findings of the study include vital insight thus also encourage local farmer, companies, manufacturer and govt. to produce organic food products by keeping in mind these above mentioned factors and target consumers based on that. It will also help to control environmental and health issues of Pakistani people.