Determinants which Influence the Consumers’ Green Purchasing Intention : “AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF CONSUMERS’ BUYING INTENTION TOWARD ECO FRIENDLY PRINTERS IN THE SWEDISH MARKET”

Sammanfattning: Young et al.(2009) report a gap in customers’ buying habits which is referred to a value action gap. This value action gap is typically where customers are concerned about environmental issues but have a hard time interpreting it when making a purchase. In the same way, Peattie and Crane (2005) report that there has been a slight growth on green purchasing since 1990, they also identified a significant gap between concerns and actual purchasing among customers. Datta (2011) states, it is important to increase people’s environmental awareness and consciousness, because as customers, they can impact the environment through their positive purchasing decisions. Datta (2011) further argues that the growing number of customers and consumers who prefer and are willing to buy Eco-friendly products are creating opportunities for businesses that are using “Eco-friendly” or “environmentally friendly” as a component of their value proposition . Considering the fact that printers produce carbon foot prints (Lubick, 2007), the authors have decided to conduct their research on the consumers’ purchasing gap towards Eco printers in Swedish market. Thus, the purpose of this study is to identify and analyze the factors which can influence consumers’ green purchasing intention. More specifically, it aims to find and analyze the factors that can influence consumers’ green purchasing intention towards buying an Eco printer in the Swedish market.  Therefore, the following research question has been formulated: What factors can influence the consumers’ green purchasing intention towards buying environmentally friendly printer? In this thesis both primary and secondary data have been used to establish its findings. A questionnaire of 201 respondents was analyzed to answer the research question. In conclusion the authors h found that there are several determinants which can influence the green purchasing intentions. Among these determinants, green knowledge and Eco literacy, attitude and green belief, environmental laws and guidelines and willingness to pay are indentified as strong influencing factors while demographics found as less stronger factor. However, subjective norms and social influence found as a weak one.