Factors affecting consumers' purchase intentions for VietGap - Certified vegetables evidence from Ninh Kieu district, Can Tho city

Abstract

During recent years, “dirty vegetables” that contain many chemicals, pesticide, and helminth infections caused by environmental pollution have become a chronic concern of many housewives. In addition, consecutive information about contaminated vegetables and food poisoning has caused mental confusion to consumers. As a result, along with the rising demands of consumers for safe food, a number of safe vegetable stores have appeared and been being developed in the past few years. However, it is not that everyone engaging in this endeavor has been successful. Therefore, the author conducted this research study to discover some factors affecting consumers‟ purchase intentions for VietGAP-certified vegetables in NinhKieu district, Can Tho city. By investigating the effects of these factors, the author aimed to provide applicable recommendations for businessmen who are selling or intended to deal in VietGAP-certified vegetables. In the light of the author‟s observation and the implications of the previous studies, there are five factors that were determined to have impacts on the intention of consumer for buying VietGAP-certified vegetables, namely, (1) price perception, (2) health consciousness, (3) environmental concern, (4) trust, and (5) demographic profile. The quantitative research method was used to analyze the primary data, which were collected by using questionnaire to research on 282 women. The inspection result shows that all measurement scales of the five factors are satisfactory in terms of reliability (via reliability test). The result from multiple regressions indicated that the first four factors have positive impacts on consumers‟ purchase intentions. Specifically, trust and price perception factor have the strongest impact. Then, through ANOVA test, demographic profile of consumers was concluded not to have any effects on the purchase intentions of consumers because there were no differences in the purchase intentions of consumers of different groups of age, income, and education. From the results in the finding section, the author presented some recommendations for business. Finally, the implications and suggestions for further research were stated. Keywords: purchase intention, VietGap-certified vegetable.