The human environment is under serious threat as natural resources such as air, water and forests are being overused. Worldwide, people have become more aware of the threatening situation and consequently many more individuals are showing concern for the environment. Often this concern is not displayed in consumers’ purchasing behaviour, as consumers who claim to be concerned about the environment are not necessarily consuming or showing a preference for environmentally–friendly products. This study examined two sets of variables, namely, person related and marketing related factors, and determined the extent to which these factors influence consumers’ behaviour when buying environmentallyfriendly products. The empirical data was collected by means of a survey, using self-administered questionnaires distributed to adult employed consumers residing in Port Elizabeth. Two hundred usable questionnaires were received. Three person related factors, namely, norms, environmental concern and environmental knowledge, and four marketing related factors, namely, price, product, place and promotion - were found to influence respondents’ behaviour when purchasing environmentally-friendly products. Environmental concern explained the largest portion of variation in purchase behaviour, while promotion explained the smallest portion of variation. Significant differences in the influence of age were found for norms, nvironmental concern, environmental knowledge and price. It is recommended that suppliers of environmentally-friendly products should ensure that these products are located at outlets which are convenient to consumers; more should be done by the relevant stakeholders to increase environmental knowledge and educate South Africans about the benefits of leading a more environmentally-friendly lifestyle; marketers find more innovative methods to convince consumers to act on their environmental concern; further attempts be made to minimise the price difference between environmentally-friendly products and traditional products; marketers should pay more attention to advertisements promoting environmentally-friendly products to ensure that these appeal to their target markets; and the performance of environmentally-friendly products should be on a par with the performance of traditional products.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nmmu/vital:9368 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Jonas, Altouise Glowdean |
| Publisher | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Faculty of Business and Economic Sciences |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Masters, MTech |
| Format | xii, 156 leaves, pdf |
| Rights | Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University |
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