Association of Consumer Self-Concept and Green Brand Attitude with Purchase Intention:
It is generally believed that the green movement can be traced to Rachel Carson (1962) who was a marine biologist and wrote a book Silent Spring (Richards, 1999). In the early 1980s, the green issue was incorporated into marketing strategies and related research (Crane, 2000). The aim of this study is to examine on how consumer self-concepts and green brand attitudes can affect purchase intentions with country of origin and green brand image as mediating factors; and product involvement and advertisement effects as moderating factors. High and low involvement products were chosen for this research. Two countries were chosen to analyze differences between the market and consumer attitudes toward green products. Latvia and Taiwan were tested and compared.
The final respondents of this research consisted of 800 respondents, from whom 400 were Latvians and other 400 – Taiwanese. Each of the 2 samples consisted of 200 persons subjected to advertisement stimuli and 200 without advertisement stimuli. LISREL techniques were used to examine high-involvement product (Apple MacBook Air) and low involvement product (Philips Ambient LED bulb). Both are green products.
This research found that (i) both consumer groups: Taiwanese and Latvian are greenrelated. (ii) When developing or promoting new products, the target group should be segmented, so that consumer self-concept can be better matched with the product. (iii) For the Latvian market, new companies should emphasize not only high involvement products but also low involvement ones. (iv) An advertisement stimuli should be used for both countries. Advertisement effect was observed for both: low and high involvement products.
Keywords: Green marketing, self concept, purchase intentions, green brand image, product involvement, advertising stimuli.