Brand Page Commitment in Creating Green Purchasing Intention of Sri Lankan Young Consumers

Abstract

Organisations which use social media platforms to market products and services are increasing than ever before. The brand pages of companies comprise of larger fan base and engagement of fans with the content posted on the brand pages are also extremely high. It is questionable whether the content these brand pages post creates intention to purchase the products. Even though many research articles could be found on social media marketing, there was very little research on the impact of brand page commitment on green product purchasing intention among the young consumers in the developing country context. The study focused on the green restaurants market and assessed the user's engagement with brand-related activities in the brand pages of those green restaurants. Further, the impact of this brand commitment on the green purchasing intention was assessed through the mediating impact of green brand awareness and e-WOM. The research is a quantitative study because the research question determines the impact of brand page commitment on green purchase intention. To collect data population under concern for the study is the youngsters who have visited brand pages of green restaurants in social media platforms within Sri Lanka. Around 300 self-administered questionnaires were distributed, while 249 were finally processed for data analysis, and the respondents were selected on convenience sampling method. AMOS 23 software and AMOS AxB Estimand were used for analyzing the data. The results show that Green Brand Awareness and e-WOM are strong (Full Mediation) mediators between Brand Page Commitment (BPC) and Green Purchasing Intention (GPI). This result proves that BPC converts to GPI only when awareness about the product is created by engaging in the brand page and with the e-WOM. Hence, Green Restaurants should encourage digital marketing campaigns on social media platforms to create awareness about its products and services while generating more e-WOM.