GREEN MARKETING PRACTICES AND CUSTOMER PURCHASE INTENTION: A STUDY OF RESTAURANTS IN VAVUNIYA TOWN AREA

Abstract

Today, the need for green marketing has heightened, as environmental issues facing the world have become more pronounced. Past research on green marketing and consumer purchase intention has been conducted mainly in developed and developing countries. Present study aims to explore the association between green marketing mix and customer purchase intention with a study of restaurants in the Vavuniya Town area. 100 customers from four Restaurants – Nelly, Oviya, Pulleys, and Suwarka – which are situated in the Vavuniya Town area – were randomly selected from the database of the restaurants and issued the questionnaire through their e-mail. Chi-Square test calculated for testing the association between personal factors and green marketing mix with customer purchase intention and Principal Components Varimax Rotated Method of factor analysis used to measure most important green marketing mix factors on the customer purchase intention. The findings of the study indicated that the gender of the customers had been positively associated with purchase intention and other three demographic variables – age, annual income, educational qualification – were not associated with the customer purchase intention, and the green marketing mix was significantly associated with the customer purchase intention. Further, the research examined the factor wise score to find the most critical factor influencing the purchase intention of the customers. The results indicated that the green promotion mix had been a major predictor of determining purchase intention of the customers of the restaurants at Vavuniya. The future study can further consider other three variables: physical environment, process and people with four mixes for considering other relevant variables and dimensions with mediating and moderating variables, as well as mixed methodology, can be applied. As this research study only covered about the Restaurants in Vavuniya Town Area, further researchers can assess other green restaurants in Sri Lanka.