More Than Skin Deep : An Investigation of Consumer Behavior Toward Green Skincare Products in the European Context

Sammanfattning: This bachelor’s thesis is a quantitative study examining the factors influencing the Green Purchase Intention of (green) skincare among European consumers. The underpinning theory for this paper was the Theory of Planned Behavior and its influencing constructs such as Attitude, Subjective Norm, and Perceived Behavioral Control, as well as various selected determinants such as Environmental Concern, Environmental Knowledge, Health Concern, Injunctive Norm, Descriptive Norm, Electronic Word-of-Mouth, Price Sensitivity, Availability, and Perceived Consumer Effectiveness. The determinants were selected after conducting a literature review that primarily consisted of secondary data in the form of research articles dealing with the same research area of Green Purchase Intention. In order to collect primary data relevant to this study, an online survey in the form of a questionnaire was employed. Overall, 385 respondents from various European countries took part in this study. The survey sample was statistically tested using the SPSS AMOS and SPSS software. This was done in order to utilize the data collected fully. Therefore, two hypothesis models were constructed for this study. The results of Model 1, which were tested using SPSS AMOS denoted that Attitude had a significant relationship with Green Purchase Intention of green skincare products. The results of Model 2, which were tested using SPSS showed that Environmental Concern, Environmental Knowledge, Health Concern, and Perceived Consumer Effectiveness had a significant positive relationship with Green Purchase Intention. Thus, as a result, this study offers findings that manufacturers and retailers of green skincare could use to advance their marketing strategies. Primarily, it can be argued that green skincare brands should focus on targeting consumers who are already environmentally conscious rather than trying to gain over consumers with no environmental knowledge and concern. However, we do not deem our results sufficient enough to allow us to provide further managerial contributions.