Abstract

There are numerous illnesses related to beauty products consumption have led many companies to plan for a better solution that emphasis on green, and natural products ingredients. Women consumers in beauty product industry is considered as one of the biggest populations that contribute significantly to economic growth worldwide. This study aims to investigate the female consumer perspective in relation to the health and environment. 200 were returned and usable. The findings indicated that factors like attitude, subjective norms and behavioral control do influence women consumer’s intention to purchase natural beauty product. Specifically, health consciousness and environment consciousness are significant in influencing their consumers’ purchase intention. Practically, the findings helped marketers to be creative when promoting the beauty products by highlighting on sustainability and product safety to feed into the women’s attitude toward natural beauty products.

Introduction

The global cosmetic sales have been growing since the last decade and will continue to grow steadily in emerging market until now ( Barbalova, 2011). The global beauty market is divided into five main business segments: skincare, haircare, color (make-up), fragrances and toiletries and divided into subdivision of premium and mass production segments which covers brand prestige, price and distribution channels used. The mass segment represented 72% of total sales in 2010 of the global market and the premium segment accounted for the remaining 28%. In addition, of global premium cosmetics sales is concentrated within the developed markets mostly in US, Japan and France ( Barbalova, 2011). However, the trends of beauty products consumption among women consumers have changed dramatically over the years. Women are becoming more safety and health conscious, demanding vast product knowledge, considerable equipped ability in making choices and preferences with positive consumption attitude ( Pudaruth, Juwaheer, & Seewoo, 2015). This has resulted the business innovation among the industry players such as going green to serve the market of environmentally friendly female consumers (Nagasawa & Kizu, 2012; Hassali, Al-Tamimi, Dawood, Verma, & Saleem, 2015) . However, in the context of cosmetic and beauty care industry in Malaysia, specific studies on green purchasing behavior for eco-friendly products are under studied. Consumers’ concerned on environmental

was reflected as an important determinant that shows how engaging the consumers are toward environmentally purchasing behavior (Chen, Chen, & Chen, 2014; Łopaciuk & Łoboda, 2013) . Hence, this paper provides an understanding of women consumers attitude on sustainable cosmetics and beauty products. Malaysia is still at the growth stage of implementing an environmentally-friendly products within the context of sustainability ( Stock, Care, & Safety, 2015). Women are getting conscious on the kind of cosmetics they are putting on their skin, which might have negative side effect on their health, but at the same time they are often unaware of the health risks that are hidden in the products they buy ( Yeob, Oark, & Sung, 2015).

Literature Review

Attitudes

According to Ajzen, Timko, & White, ( 1982) attitude is a consolidate part that classify an individual’s sense about an action and his or her opinion of the positive and negative elements of the object of that behavior. Previous literature that studied attitude towards cosmetics, with regards to health consciousness and environmental consciousness have established comprehensive investigation on the request of female consumer on natural beauty care in Malaysia.

Environmental Consciousness

The role of environmental concerns on consumer purchasing intention is becoming clear on the consumption of environmentally friendly products. Environment awareness is not only a concern for its ecological associations and organizer but also important for marketing and sales ( First & Khetriwal, 2010; Bartels & Onwezen, 2014). Based on Olsen, Slotegraaf, & Chandukala, ( 2014) consumer’s interest regarding ecological matters explained their attitudes towards a goods and buying behaviors, exceptionally for environmentally or ecological products. Nevertheless, many studies were done on the relationship of environmental consciousness and organic consumption ( Salleh et al, 2010), others have found environmental consciousness as an important determinant on consumer decision to buy automobile ( Hellier et al, 2003) and green hotel ( Davies et al, 2012)

Health Consciousness

Based on M. Chen, ( 2009) women can adapt their consumption patterns when they accepted that their behaviors affect their health. Female consumers purchase green or environmentally-friendly goods not only as of their relevance for eco-friendly protection but also for their own health (de Mooij & Hofstede, 2011). Supported in another study, Dutch customers also pursued by health consciousness when buying organic food purchase. Even though investigation have focused in health as the compared to environmental protection ( Yadav & Pathak, 2016) the outcome may be combined by customers’ position of natural nutrition and time.

Subjective Norms

According to Coleman et.al ( 2011) the determinants of subjective norm as a function of the individual’s belief to participate or not in an activity is influenced by the person’s readiness to obey to the situation. A person may perform certain behavior with the influence of families, or social groups (Shah Alam and Sayuti, 2011). According to the Kalafatis et.al ( 1999), the subjective norm can control one’s behavior which is different from the way a person desires to perform act. According to the Ewing ( 2001) research also found that social norms are important motivator for ecologically responsible behavior. In addition, study done by Qader and Zainuddin, ( 2011) states that one of the major social influences was whereas media exposure, which significantly influence a consumer’s purchase intention of environmentally friendly goods.

Perceived behavioral control

Perceived behavioral control is indicates as a individual’s perceived ease or strong of bringing out an intended behavior by ( Ajzen, 1991). This was decided by the person’s trusts regarding the ability of both situation and domestic aspects to assist in see the behavior. According to Kim and Chung ( 2011) state that tough people consider they have extra capability such as expertise, learning, period and cash, their understandings of limitation and bold are extreme as follow get up their behavioral intention.

Purchase Intention

For these researchers, intention is the most highly expected element for behavior. Commonly, additional attitude and subjective norm are advantageous, extra perceived control is to increase and additional intention of individual performs behavior in issue. In additional, Hur, Kim, & Park, ( 2013) analyzed the influence of the customer principles on the buying intention of natural beauty care product and the modulate result of behavioral control perceived on the connection among attitude and purchasing intention. The outcomes verify that principles of environmental positively influence attitudes towards natural beauty care products. The previous research also influenced aspects of buying intention perceived behavioral control moderates the relationship between attitude and purchasing intention.

Methodology

The respondents for this study are women who have been using the natural beauty product for the past three years. These respondents are able to understand the phenomenon of using natural beauty product and consequences on chemical substance in conventional product. Data were collected using questionnaires that were distributed among the potential respondents, in which the data is collected from the right sample group.

Findings

Regression analysis been used to find out purchase intention towards natural beauty products. A linear regression was used to determine whether the positive relationship was present health consciousness and environmental consciousness towards attitude. The result shows the value of R square is 23% stated that there is positive relationship between health and environmental consciousness towards attitude. This is supported by Beta (B) values which also score a positive value with 29.2% and 27.3%. Based on the results in Table 1.0 it shows a strong significant with 0.00. It can be assumed that health consciousness fully and environmental consciousness partially influences their attitude.

Table 1.0 Coefficientsa

Table 2.0 Coefficientsa

Discussion and ConclusionBStd. ErrorBetaT-ValueP-Value1( Constant)1.998.3435.826.000Attitude.217.080.1812.714.007Subjective_Norms.097.044.1622.218.028Perceived_Behavioral.236.063.2753.729.000A. Dependent Variable: Purchase_IntentionBStd. ErrorBetaT-ValueP-Value1( Constant)1.998.3435.826.000Attitude.217.080.1812.714.007Subjective_Norms.097.044.1622.218.028Perceived_Behavioral.236.063.2753.729.000A. Dependent Variable: Purchase_Intention

This study aimed to investigate the factors that may influenced women consumers intention to purchase natural beauty products using theory of planned behavior. The study developed a conceptual model by incorporating major predictor such as personal values into the well-established theory of planned behavior. Overall, the developed model of the study brings some contribution to the theory which is discussed in the following. Based on the findings, it was confirmed that all three variables do provide significant influence on women consumers’ intention towards natural beauty products. In the second analysis, the dimension of attitudes includes perceived health consciousness and environmental consciousness. Based on the result health consciousness contributed to the highest variance of the women’s purchase intention of natural beauty product followed by the environmental consciousness. Therefore, it is highly recommended to include these two variables as the indicator of purchase intention of natural beauty products. In terms of health and environmental consciousness, the result showed women consumers with greater concern for their health will have a higher intention to purchase natural beauty products. They also indicated how environmentalism as important to protecting themselves and their families. also having more positive feelings about environmental activities and are concerned about environmental risks towards their health. Hence, it is suggested for the retail cosmetic stores to implement effective marketing strategies emphasizing on ecological beauty or product safety to satisfy the values of potential consumers. As women are mostly the users of cosmetics and beauty products, hence it is recommended that retailers might want to change consumers’ perception of higher price to affordable prices using multiple marketing strategies which implement the ideas that they capable to buy the sustainable and natural beauty products