Consumers’ preferences towards eco-labeled products and purchase intention : The moderating effect of national culture

Sammanfattning: Eco-labeling is an important matter in the modern world, because of its relationship to the significant issues of the society, i.e. environmental and health care. More and more people pay great attention to the ‘green’ aspect of their lives. Many researchers, in their turn, unveil the topic devoted to the eco-labeling strategies in their academic papers.  However, there is a certain knowledge gap in the existing literature, which allowed the researchers of this paper to focus the study on consumers' preferences towards eco-labeled products and purchase intention in the context of cultural diversity. Cultural aspect might have the crucial effect and predetermine consumers’ behavior to some extent. Thus, for companies’ management it is highly important to be aware of cultural context of the country they are already operating in or only going to internationalize into. Prior to empirical data collection a literature review on eco-labeling, cultural diversity, and purchase intention were conducted, followed by the integration of gained information into the theoretical model. The theoretical model, developed by the authors, presents the research of the perceived association between consumers’ preferences, as presented by own health care and environmental care, and purchase intention under the impact of the moderating effect of national culture. In order to test the hypotheses formulated on the literature and model bases, primary data from respondents from three different countries (namely, the USA, Sweden, and Russia) and secondary data from existing literature were collected, the integration of which allowed getting some relevant conclusions and results. After the data collection and all the statistical process analyzing it, the researchers concluded that culture has an impact on the association of consumers' preferences and purchase intention of eco-labeled products, but this moderating effect varies in terms of the context of consumers' preferences and different cultural dimensions.