THE CONSUMER BUYING MOTIVES OF ALTERNATIVE FUEL VEHICLES AND THEIR IMPACT ON PURCHASING INTENTION IN SRI LANKA

Abstract

The primary objective of this study is to explore the impact of consumer buying motives towards the alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs’) in Sri Lanka developing a new model to create new promotional strategies among all the stakeholders. Having examined the research gap pertaining to the above context, concerning on theoretical, literature and practice gap, the problem statement was developed for the study. On par with the main focusing area, the researcher established other factors to the model in order to widen the scope of the study to an advanced perspective. Customer’s Perceived Value (CPV) and Consumer Innovativeness (CI) were introduced as a mediator and the moderator as per deep literature. Consequently, in addition to sound empirical support, a sound theoretical framework was included combining all the constructs. The ontological stance is Respresentationalism while the epistemological stance is positivism choosing the deductive approach, quantitative research strategy. The pre-survey was performed to ensure the content validity while 67 responses were collected through a pilot survey to ensure the reliability and validity measures. The multilevel mixed method sampling technique was adopted to collect the data since the population is large and sample framework is not available. The self-administered questionnaires were electronically collected from 388 AFV’s owners covering all 25 districts in Sri Lanka. According to the nature of the study, the PLS-SEM technique was adopted to analyze the data. According to the findings, the UM has strongest impact on purchasing intention followed by HM and EM respectively. Further, the findings showed that CPV partially mediates relationships among HM->PI, and UM->PI while not mediating the EM ->PI. Further, it was shown that CI doesn’t significantly moderate the CBM’s ->PI. Finally, the Impotent Performance Map Analysis (IMPA) was carried out to analyze the importance and performance of the constructs of CBMs’ towards PI and confirmed that UM & HM based CPV is the most influential factor on the PI of AFV’s context recommending all stakeholders to improve the UM and HM based actions accordingly. Further, findings show that the CPV is the antecedent of PI confirming the robustness of TRA/TPB.