FACTORS AFFECTING CUSTOMER PURCHASE INTENTION OF CLOTH BAGS FOR SHOPPING.pdf

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
VIETNAM JAPAN UNIVERSITY
TRINH NGOC HONG ANH
FACTORS AFFECTING CUSTOMER
PURCHASE INTENTION OF CLOTH
BAGS FOR SHOPPING
MASTER’S THESIS
MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
Hanoi, 2019
H i

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
VIETNAM JAPAN UNIVERSITY
TRINH NGOC HONG ANH
FACTORS AFFECTING CUSTOMER
PURCHASE INTENTION OF CLOTH
BAGS FOR SHOPPING
MAJOR: BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
CODE: 60340102
RESEARCH SUPERVISORS:
ASSOC.PROF.DR. VU ANH DUNG
PROF.DR. TOHRU INOUE
Hanoi, 2019

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT
I would like to express my gratitude to all those who gave me the possibility to
complete this thesis. I have received extensive help, suggestions and
encouragements at each step along the way, and I am very grateful to my
beloved and dedicated professors, family and friends for their time and support.
First and foremost, I would like to thank my two supervisors, who are not only
my guide throughout the completion of this thesis but also my lecturers,
Associate Professor. Vu Anh Dung and Professor. Tohru Inoue, for their whole-
hearted guidance and help as well as invaluable feedbacks, which enable me to
complete this paper.
Furthermore, during this work I have received remarkable help and
encouragement from my beloved professor in Business Administration
Department – Professor Tran Thi Bich Hanh for her thoughtful support and
advice during my time of generating ideas and finalizing the topic.
Besides, I would like to say thank-you to all of the participants who helped me
answer my questionnaire when I did the survey, without you there will not be
the results for this research.
Last but not least, I am greatly indebted to Vietnam Japan University and
Yokohama National University for creating a wonderful study environment for
me to develop myself and study which encourage me to finish my thesis.
Student,
Trinh Ngoc Hong Anh

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ABSTRACT
Plastic shopping bags are a daily use product of everyone, which is not only harmful
to environment but also to people’s health. Environmental terms such as global
warming, green house effects are becoming more and more popular in the media
channel. People seem to be more aware of the negative effects of using plastic
shopping bags, which leads to a need for an alternative. Cloth bags are a typical
option for changing in everyday life of customers, which is recyclable and is made
with more eco-friendly materials compared to plastic bags. This study explores the
factors affecting consumer purchase intention of cloth bags for shopping by using
theory of planned behavior. The constructs of theory of planned behavior: attitude,
subjective norms, perceived availability and perceived consumer effectiveness are
tested to check if they have a positive significant relationship with consumer
purchase intention of cloth bags for shopping or not. Moreover, since media
exposure seems to make a certain influence on the relationships between constructs
of theory of planned behavior and purchase intention, it is used as a proposed
moderator. The study uses convenient sampling and distributes questionnaire
adopted from previous researches to 120 respondents both offline and online. 113
results sent back to analyzed by SPSS 20. The results found that attitude and
subjective norm have a significant positive impact on purchase intention while
perceived availability and perceived consumer effectiveness do not. Media exposure
to environmental message also does not show a moderating effect to the relations.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENT............................................................................................. i
ABSTRACT............................................................................................................... ii
LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................... vi
LIST OF FIGURES................................................................................................. viii
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................1
1.1. Background and necessity of the research........................................................1
1.1.1. Why is environment degrading gradually? ................................................1
1.1.2. Plastic bags versus cloth bags. ...................................................................3
1.1.3. Green marketing and customer purchase intention....................................5
1.2. Statement of the problems ................................................................................8
1.3. Research objectives...........................................................................................9
1.4. Research questions..........................................................................................10
1.5. Research scope...................................................................................................10
1.6. Structure of the research .................................................................................10
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ..................................................................12
2.1. Green consumptions and related definitions......................................................12
2.1.1. Sustainable consumption .............................................................................12
2.1.2. Green consumption......................................................................................13
2.1.3. Green products and related researches ........................................................16

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2.1.4. Eco-friendly shopping bags and cloth bags.................................................17
2.2. Consumer behavior and purchase intention.......................................................22
2.3. Theory of Planned behavior...............................................................................25
2.3.1. Attitudes towards behavior..........................................................................26
2.3.2. Perceived behavioral control .......................................................................27
2.3.3. Subjective norms .........................................................................................28
2.4. Media exposure to environmental messages:.....................................................28
2.5. Final proposed research model...........................................................................30
CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ......................................................31
3.1. Research process ................................................................................................31
3.2. Sampling and data collection .............................................................................32
3.3. Designing questionnaire.....................................................................................33
3.4. Analyzing data plan............................................................................................38
CHAPTER 4. DATA PRESENTATIONS AND FINDINGS..................................47
4.1. Data description ..............................................................................................47
4.2. Reliability analysis.............................................................................................51
4.2.1. Reliability of ATTITUDE-ATT scale .........................................................51
4.2.2. Reliability of SUBJECTIVE NORM – SN scale ........................................52
4.2.3. Reliability of PERCEIVED AVAILABILITY - PA scale ..........................53
4.2.4. Reliability of PERCEIVED CUSTOMER EFFECTIVENESS scale .........54
4.2.5. Reliability of PURCHASE INTENTION scale...........................................57

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4.2.6. Reliability of MEDIA EXPOSURE TO ENVIORNMENTAL MESSAGE
scale .......................................................................................................................58
4.3. Exploratory factor analysis ................................................................................59
4.3.1. Exploratory factor analysis of TPB scale ....................................................59
4.3.2. Exploratory factor analysis of PURCHASE INTENTION SCALE ...........62
4.3.3. Exploratory factor analysis of MEDIA EXPOSURE TO
ENVIORNMENTAL MESSAGE Scale ...............................................................64
4.4. Regression analysis ............................................................................................66
4.5. Moderation analysis via PROCESS model 1 SPSS...........................................72
4.5.1. Moderation analysis between MEDIA EXPOSURE to the relationship of
ATTITUDE and PURCHASE INTENTION ........................................................73
4.5.2. Moderation analysis between MEDIA EXPOSURE to the relationship of
SUBJECTIVE NORM and PURCHASE INTENTION .......................................75
4.6. Hypothesis tested results....................................................................................78
CHAPTER 5: RESULT DISCUSSION....................................................................80
5.1. Result discussion and implications ....................................................................80
5.2. Contributions of the research .............................................................................85
5.3. Limitations and future research direction ..........................................................86
REFERENCES..........................................................................................................88
APPENDIX 1. QUESTIONNAIRE..........................................................................94

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LIST OF TABLES
Table 3.1. Measuring items for survey .....................................................................35
Table 3.2. Likert scale of Agreement extent.............................................................37
Table 3.3. Likert scale of Frequency extent..............................................................38
Table 3.4. Encoded terms for data testing.................................................................38
Table 4.1. Descriptive Statistics of 113 participant ..................................................47
Table 4.2. Gender distributions among 113 participants ..........................................48
Table 4.3. Income distributions among 113 participants..........................................50
Table 4.4. Reliability statistics of ATT scale............................................................51
Table 4.5. Reliability statistics of SN scale ..............................................................52
Table 4.6. Reliability statistics of PA scale ..............................................................53
Table 4.7 Reliability statistics of PCE scale – 1st
test...............................................54
Table 4.8. Reliability statistics of PCE scale – 2nd
test.............................................55
Table 4.9. Reliability statistics of PCE scale – final test ..........................................56
Table 4.10. Reliability statistics of PI scale..............................................................57
Table 4.11. Reliability statistics of ME scale............................................................58
Table 4.12. Exploratory factor analysis for TPB scale .............................................59
Table 4.13. Exploratory factor analysis for PI scale.................................................62
Table 4.14. Exploratory factor analysis for ME scale...............................................64
Table 4.15. Pearson correlation statistic ...................................................................66
Table 4.16: Collinearity Statistics.............................................................................68

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Table 4.17: Regression analysis summary................................................................69
Table 4.18. Regression analysis summary................................................................71
Table 4.19. Hypotheses tested results .......................................................................78

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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 2.1. Five stages of consumer buying process ................................................23
Figure 2.2. Conceptual framework............................................................................25
Figure 2.3. Theory of reasoned action and theory of planned behavior ...................26
Figure 2.4. Proposed theoretical model ....................................................................30
Figure 3.1. Research process proposed by the author...............................................31
Figure 3.2. Conceptual Model of simple moderatio .................................................44
Figure 3.3. Statistical Model of simple moderation..................................................45
Figure 4.1. Age distribution among 113 participants................................................49
Figure 4.2. Education level distribution among 113 participants .............................50
Figure 4.3. Regression Standardized Residual..........................................................68
Figure 4.4. Proposed conceptual moderating effect of ME ......................................73
Figure 4.5. Statistical diagram with ME moderates the relation...............................74
Figure 4.6. Moderation analysis statistic for ATT*ME............................................75
Figure 4.7. Proposed conceptual moderating effect of ME ......................................76
Figure 4.8. Statistical diagram with ME moderates the relation...............................76
Figure 4.9. Moderation analysis statistic for SN*ME...............................................77

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1. Background and necessity of the research
1.1.1. Why is environment degrading gradually?
It is undeniable to say that the 21st century has been marked as the period of
economic, technological, and scientific achievements. Under the impact of major
developments, the world economy as a whole and especially Vietnamese economy,
have maintained an exceptional growth with remarkable achievements. According
to world economic forum, Vietnam is “one of the stars of the emerging markets
universe” with its economic growth 6-7% rivals China (Vanham, 2018). In fact, in
2017, the economy of Vietnam grew by an impressive 6.81% laying an important
foundation for its plan towards the future. This ASEAN nation, recently, seems to
become an attractive environment for giant brands’ manufacturing and foreign
investment due to their infrastructure, human resources and market-friendly policies
from the government.
However, along with the good sides of economic growth, nations will usually face
some challenges in regard to stimulate a sustainable development, which in terms of
developing countries, involves environmental problems and protection. In a
common sense, in order to create such noticeable performances, a certain amount of
resources must be exploited and there will be consequences and impacts on nature.
These are inevitable results of a quick development process and minor attention to
the nature while not covering every aspect of development in one country. Talking
about Vietnam, one typical example is that economic growth means more foreign
investment which results in building many more factories and plants in the country.
According to a study conducted by researchers at Harvard University and the
University of Colorado Boulder, by 2030 when comparing ten countries in ASEAN
region, Vietnam will be the most affected by coal pollution with a rate of premature
mortality due to coal-fired plant emissions (Koplitz et al, 2017). This means that the

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environment is being heavily damaged and affecting the condition of people’s lives
as a whole and especially their health. Vietnam is finding itself in a crossroads in
terms of its future economic development model. The most important thing is the
need for a way of balancing the conflicts between environmental issues and
sustainable development, climate change vulnerability, natural disasters, pollution,
ecosystems and biodiversity. (Achim Steiner, 2018)
In recent years, Vietnamese government are taking steps by steps towards a
sustainable future. Vietnam’s Comprehensive Poverty Reduction and Growth
Strategy mentioned creating an environment for sustainable development is one of
the major development goals, which integrate with different types of government’s
strategies to face the challenges of environmental problems. In addition, frequent
efforts have been made and put into policies and programs trying to transform the
industrial structure and made the production process cleaner, more efficient and
effective. However, the concerns for environmental issues and their catastrophic
impacts are not only recognized by the government but also by the mass media,
environmentalists, non-profit organizations, by many business and customers – the
people. Many businesses can reduce the impacts on environment caused by
production activities but it is not enough; the damage to environments caused by the
customers with their selection, usage and disposal of products also is also a major
behavior that need changing. With the environmental problems that are visible day
by day, customers are more and more concerned about the immediate and gradual
consequences of those problems while receiving alarming news from the public,
environmental activists and environment protection organizations. (Agyeman, 2014)
Why customers perform a central part in the environmental protection process?
According to Gardner and Stern (2002), environmental problems for example global
warming or climate change, basically, relate to human behaviors. When there is an
increasing demand of greener products among customers, suppliers will respond to
that and offer them to them. However, in order to do that, businesses need to have
an in-depth look into the customers’ behaviors, understand what drives them to have

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that type of needs or what influences them to shift their behavior from traditional to
green consumption. In the end, for a business to fulfil their social responsibility and
achieve a competitive advantage over competitors, there is a need to review the
circumstances and consumers purchase behaviors for green products.
In fact, in the world, green consumption is formed as a new trend in the field of
customer behavior although it seems that the action is done better in developed
countries than developing ones (Vietnam for example). In the context of Vietnam,
polluted environment, contaminated food and water and such environmental issues
are becoming more and more noticeable, many businesses decided to join in the
trend to produce and sell more green products aiming at helping the environments
steps and steps. However, towards consumers, in order for them to change from
cognitive thoughts and sole awareness to actions depend on various factors
subjectively and objectively. In reality, Vietnamese consumers are aware of what
should be done to help the environment but they still hesitate to act and follow the
trends completely. This also claims for business to look into Vietnamese consumers
behaviors.
1.1.2. Plastic bags versus cloth bags.
Using plastic bags in Vietnam is very popular among individuals, households and
community. This behavior is a habit of Vietnamese people all ages. Nylon
bags/plastic bags are used every day from local markets, stores to supermarkets or
shopping malls because of their convenience and cheap cost. According to I. S. Zen
et al (2013), customers perceive receiving and using plastic bags for free is an
appropriate right and an important factor to help their shopping become easier.
Without reliable public information to the people, plastic bags are believed to be a
traditional kind of consumption product which are safe to the environment and
human’s health. Because plastic bags are a daily and common product that used so
frequently and thoughtlessly everywhere, their damage to environment are
sometimes overlooked (Akulian et al. 2007). However, the damage caused by their
usage is becoming noticeable. The existence of plastic bags being thrown into the

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nature will cause severe damage to the soil and water. Surprisingly, the soil and
water environment contaminated by plastic bags will both directly and indirectly
affect human health. There are no official statistics on the number of plastic bags
used in Vietnam yet but there are some surveys and estimates of these numbers.
Although there are differences in numbers, the overall impression of the figures is
very large, this claims for a change in consumption behavior.
One of the ways to reduce the damage coming from plastic bags dumping into
environment is by reducing the number of trash and garbage relating to plastic bags.
So, one of reasonable solution to decrease the number of plastic garbage is using
eco-friendly bags in daily activities instead of plastic ones. The current trend of
customers preferred eco-friendly shopping bags can be divided into the following
categories: plastic, paper and fabric/cloth bags. In searching for an alternative of
plastic bags in this context, fabric or cloth bags is used (generally called cloth bags).
This is because paper bags are also considered eco-friendly bags but their life span
is not long and not as reusable and recyclable as cloth bags. In terms of availability,
cloth bags are also seen to be sold more frequently compared to paper bags because
of its convenience and mainly Vietnamese customers use motorbikes to travel so
using cloth bags will be more suitable for them.
Companies offer green products like cloth bags which is not only friendly and less
harmful for the environment but also good for their brand image and reputation,
show their social responsibility. Cloth bags in particular, and eco-friendly bags in
general are normally treated as a means of storage for goods and products when
consumers when shopping rather than just a plain consumption product. This relates
to the idea of plastic bags as a means of storage, usually given as a free
complementary with the any goods bought in stores. However, cloth bags in these
days can be seen displayed at stores like normal products and in supermarkets, cloth
bags nowadays can be offered for customers to purchase at the end of checkout
counters as a complementary good and to raise environmental protection awareness.
Hence, in this research, cloth bags are be considered as a type of green product for

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customers to buy at any store, supermarkets or shopping malls, and as an alternative
to plastic shopping bags.
1.1.3. Green marketing and customer purchase intention
In the world, there are many researches looking into the concept of green
consumption in general and consumer purchase intention in particular using
different variety of theories. However, the main subjects for these types of
researches normally involve recycling, green energy and other common types of
green products. Moreover, many authors doing research in this field have chosen
theory of planned behavior to explore this psychological aspect of customers –
behavioral intention with some new type of green products or services such as green
hotel in researches by Heesup Han et al. or eco-friendly restaurants by Yong Joong
Kim et al. Others tend to focus on conducting researches relating to products in a
broader term like “green product consumption”.
Few researches involving the concept of eco-friendly shopping bags or choosing it
as the unit of analysis, especially cloth bags so it claims for more studies exploring
about this type of products since it is normally ignored comparing to other types of
alternatives for plastic bags, both in the world and in Vietnam. Some example of a
typical research about shopping bags is: “Applying Ethical Concepts to the Study
of “Green” Consumer Behavior: An Analysis of Chinese Consumers’ Intentions
to Bring their Own Shopping Bags” (Chan, R. Y., 2007). In this research Chan and
associates focuses mostly on general ethics and social psychology to present a
model to decide the main factors affecting consumer’s intention to bring their own
shopping bags when visiting a supermarket. Another research also investigated the
ethical behaviors of customer as “bring your own shopping bags” named “BYOB:
How Bringing Your Own Shopping Bags Leads to Treating Yourself and the
Environment” by Uma R. Karmarkar et al. Both studies concerned about the factors
that can affect customers to change to green behaviors in order to minimize the
negative impacts of pollution and climate change, however, the aspects of providers
for these reusable shopping bags have not been concentrated much. This means that

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when considering reusable shopping bags for customers to bring from their homes,
their materials, original sources or seller have not been mentioned. In the context of
recent years, since providing green products seem to be a promising business and
more and more startups or businessmen want to get access to this niche, the need for
doing more researches about a new type of green products for companies is high.
Some other researches such as: “Consumer identity and moral obligations in
non‐plastic bag consumption: a dialectical perspective” (Hélène Cherrier, 2006)
studies about green consumption behavior with their use of non-plastic bags, but the
author looks into the problem with a different perspective, philosophical view.
Hence, there are not a large number of studies explore this particular green
consumption product. With the aim at predicting purchase intention of customers
psychologically to help business develop in a sustainable way with the offering of a
green product, especially in Vietnam’s context and in order to fill in this gap of
research and contribute an appropriate approach for further studies as well as
consider the current situation of damages caused by plastic bag user, it is necessary
to study about an alternative of plastic bags, in this case cloth bags for shopping is
chosen.
According to Vicki Morwitz (2012), purchase intention are normally considered one
of the primary inputs for marketing managers to measure consumer demand,
forecast future sales, assess and decide which actions to takes to favorably impact
the consumer purchase intentions. Hence, it is reasonable to consider cloth bags as a
type of green product and look into their consumer purchase intentions in the favor
of both businesses and government in general and especially for consumer
themselves. As mentioned above, theory of planned behavior is normally used to
predict behavioral intentions of customers, consider the widespread popularity of
this theory and the amount of previous studies have used it for researching the same
green marketing and green consumption, this research also adopts this theory for
looking into the factors affecting customer purchase intention of cloth bags for
shopping.

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1.1.4. Media exposure to environmental messages as additional variables
Theory of planned behavior is normally used with three constructs named: Attitudes,
Subjective norms and Perceived Behavioral control to determine customers’
intentions. However, previous studies suggest that not only these three factors can
have influence on intentions of customers and there should be some other specific
factors that can be included in this model. (Armitage, 2001) Especially in recent
years, the amount of evidences in previous studies also build up when researchers
continue adding additional constructs to strengthen the predictive power of theory
of planned behavior (for example adding self-identity; habit or past behaviors etc.).
Ajzen also recommended that besides adding direct constructs to three original ones
of the theory, changing the path of variables by adding moderators is one of the
good way to create depth for the model. Baron and Kenny (1986) described that a
moderator variable can be a quantitative or qualitative depending on the nature of
the researches, in which the moderator can change the direction or strengthen the
relationship between dependent and independent variables.
This study uses media exposure to environmental messages as a moderator to theory
of planned behavior, for the following reasons:
 The fact that recently in all types of official media such as social media,
television, newspapers etc. the negative impacts of pollution and environmental
problems are spreading more and more. Governments and non-governmental
organizations are trying to raise awareness of people about protect natural
resources and environments. Thus, Vietnam’s economy is developing rapidly
(described by GDP increased by 7.08% in 2018 - the highest figure since 2008;
the economic structure of Vietnam continues to shift positively according to the
trend of reducing the proportion of agriculture, forestry and fisheries; increase
the share of industry, construction and service industry) is a rationale behind the
high consumption level of Vietnamese. However, media also points out that
behind the successful economy and consumption growth, the environment is
being damaged, especially by the amount of plastic garbage from daily uses.

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This also bring the green products producers a chance to help change the
behavior of customers from using plastics to alternatives. One of them is cloth
bags for shopping instead of traditional low-cost free plastic bags.
 In academic aspects, media exposure is used in some previous researches such
as “The moderating effect of media exposure on the purchase intention of
generic drugs: an application of the theory of planned behavior” by Reynaldo A.
Baustista, Jr. There are some other moderators considered when researchers
extended theory of planned behavior in green marketing filed, for example: in a
study named “Exploring purchase intention of green skincare products using
theory of planned behavior: testing the moderating effects of country of origin
and price sensitivity” by Chia Lin Hsu et al. Others study in the same field did
not explore moderating effects much so there is a lack of research expanding the
theory using this approach. For this specific case, cloth bag for shopping is a
common consumption products when offered to customers to raise their
environmental protection awareness, its price can be higher than plastic bags but
due to its reusability; and the fact that consumers normally do not care for the
country of origin (because cloth bags is used for more environmental protection
rather than fashionable and expensive high-end products as long as their
materials is good), price sensitivity and country of origin is not very suitable to
add to this study. Meanwhile, media exposure is usually a good means of
communication to encourage people to develop green behaviors, it is more
advisable to use Media exposure to environmental messages as an additional
variable of this model.
1.2. Statement of the problems
The problems of plastic bags dumping to environment from daily use is a threat to
people’s lives. In the world, government and different companies and organizations
coming with various solutions to help deal with this such as: banning plastic bags’
uses or put a restriction to different entities, switching plastic bags used in business
to alternatives. In Vietnam, the Government is taking some first step to prevent the

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negative effects of using plastic bags. The project to enhance the environmental
pollution control due to people using difficult-to-decompose plastic bags states that
those types of plastic bags are banned from manufacturing and used. Similarly,
many companies and organizations also undertake campaigns to help educate
people about the impact of using plastic bags and partly help shift the consumer’s
preferences to use alternatives of plastic bags. With great efforts, Vietnamese
people seem aware of those consequences of their usage of plastic bags. However,
they are somehow unconcerned and due to the convenience of plastic bags, still
reach to use them. In the case of more and more eco-friendly bags are produced and
promoted for daily uses, in particular cloth bags, it is necessary to investigate what
can influence the intention to purchase cloth bags in order to control this
phenomenon and also help the business investigate what actions to take to shift the
consumer’s preferences to green consumption. Moreover, the lack of researches in
this subject, especially in Vietnam also a more recent and newer look into this field
of study.
1.3. Research objectives
First, based on the literature on theory of planned behavior and customer purchase
intention, identifying and investigating if the components of theory of planned
behavior can be considered as factors affecting customer purchase intention for one
of green products known as cloth bags for shopping, which means these constructs
are seen as units of analysis. Second, this research aims at finding a moderator that
can make an influence on the relationship between the constructs of theory of
planned behavior and customer purchase intention. In addition, these relationships
are be explored to find out how they are affected and from that, this thesis gives
several solutions to help improve the situation dedicated to the context of Vietnam.

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1.4. Research questions
Together with the objectives and necessity of the research, this thesis answers the
following questions:
1. What factors affect consumer purchase intention of cloth bags for shopping?
2. Are there any variables moderate the relations between these factors and
customer purchase intention of cloth bags for shopping?
1.5. Research scope
This study is conducted in Hanoi City which is the capital of Vietnam where there is
a considerable amount of population with strong purchasing power and high level of
concern for green products and green consumption behavior with the time range
from the end of 2018 to 2019.
1.6. Structure of the research
This thesis is divided into six chapters, as presented as follow:
 Chapter 1: Introduction
This part introduces briefly about the research, the necessity of it, research
objectives, research questions and scope.
 Chapter 2: Literature review
This chapter provides theoretical framework for the research. It includes
fundamental concepts about green marketing and green consumption behavior as
well as theory of planned behaviors and explanation on research model and the
hypotheses used in this research.
 Chapter 3: Research Methodology
This chapter describes the data collection and analyzing process which are methods
based on previous literature.

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 Chapter 4: Data presentation and findings
This chapter gives description of data collected, and then show analysis results from
SPSS software, version 20 and then test the proposed hypothesis.
 Chapter 5: Discussions and conclusion
This chapter answers the research questions, discuss research findings as well as
giving some suggestions or any solutions to the found results, limitations and
further research direction.

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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. Green consumptions and related definitions
2.1.1. Sustainable consumption
Due to the rapid growth of every aspect all over the world, the scientific community
started to realize that unsustainable development was a crucial issue which led to
the collapse of the environment and the economy. The Club of Rome first
mentioned the term “sustainable consumption” in their article named “the growth
limits”. (Meadows et al., 1972)
From that point of view, sustainable development is assumed to help mankind
survive in the long run after decades of economic development, which is undeniable
the solution without any alternative. (Seiffert and Loch, 2005). Moreover, in the
area of sustainable development research, consumption has appeared to play a key
role and also the priority position. Consumptions in economics can be understood as
the use of production products such as goods and services in order to satisfy
human’s needs. In common sense, when a person considers their consumption, their
behavior relates to that household’s income and savings. However, consumption is
not only important to economic concepts but also vital to society and the
environment. Many researchers stated that consumption along with production
system is a crucial necessity to establish sustainable development. (Akenji and
Bengtsson, 2014)
From that, sustainable consumption is, therefore, contributing to and leading the
world towards a more sustainable development goal. In 1994, Oslo Symposium on
Sustainable Consumption proposed a definition on sustainable consumption as "the
use of services and related products which respond to basic needs and bring a better
quality of life while minimizing the use of natural resources and toxic materials as
well as emissions of waste and pollutants over the life cycle of the service or
product so as not to jeopardize the needs of future generations." (Norwegian

13
Ministry of the Environment, 1994). The global development research center, on the
other hand, explained the term as the following: “Sustainable consumption is the
consumption of goods and services that have minimal impact upon the environment,
are socially equitable and economically viable whilst meeting the basic needs of
humans, worldwide. Sustainable consumption targets everyone, across all sectors
and all nations, from the individual to governments and multinational
conglomerates.” (Hari Srinivas, 2005).
In the end, different researchers have come up with numerous definitions for the
term “sustainable consumption”, their meaning all contains the following points:
1. Human’s uses of goods and services which satisfy their needs
2. Minimizing the influence on the environment including reduce the use of natural
resources or limit environmental pollution.
3. The concern for the next generation’s future.
4. Consider the products or services life cycle as a whole
In this research, with the idea of finding out what factors can affect the intention of
customer to purchase cloth bag for shopping is one of the solution to help reduce the
negative impacts on the environment and help customers towards a more
sustainable lifestyle, knowing the true meaning of what sustainable consumption is
important.
2.1.2. Green consumption
The concept of green consumption was first mentioned in 1970 and from that
time, many studies have expanded this concept. So far, green consumption is still a
relatively new concept and is defined in many ways. The term itself seems to bring
two opposite definition into one. “Green” normally is associated with conservation
of natural resources while “consumption” going with exploiting those kinds of
resources and at the same time destroy the environment. Traditional consumption
overlaps with other concepts, such as ethical consumerism while green consumption

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is closely linked to the notions of sustainable development or sustainable
consumption behavior, leading to inconsistency and clarity in the concept in
research materials.
That being said, it emphasizes the environmental factors both in short and
long terms. The concept of green consumption normally assign responsibility or co-
responsibility to consumers who address environmental issues by adopting green or
environmental-friendly actions such as using green products (organic goods,
renewable natural energy for example) or avoiding products which are harmful to
environment. (Prothero, 2008). Nguyen Huu Thu (2014) also explained that: Green
consumption behavior is the act of finding, buying and using personal and group
products and services with the aim of reducing waste causing environmental
pollution, ensuring safety for public health, expressed through their awareness,
attitudes and actions. Sisira (2007) also offers a fairly comprehensive definition of
green consumption with the view that this is a process involves social behaviors
such as buying biological foods, recycling, reusing, and limiting excess
consumption or use friendly transport system. According to Lee (2010), green
consumption is an act of consuming products that can be preserved, useful to the
environment and meet environmental concerns. These are products that facilitate the
long-term goal of environmental protection and conservation. Green consumption
involves not only consumer unused goods that damage the natural environment, but
also decides to buy environmentally friendly products and recycled products.
In this research, green consumption is considered and approached in terms of the
following point:
- Buying green products
- Adopting environmental-friendly behaviors: recycle the green products
- Promote green behaviors

15
In Vietnam, researches about green consumption are not a significant amount.
However, there are some should be mentioned, such as “Evaluation of the impact of
green consumption in sustainable development in Vietnam” (2015) which belongs
to “For the cause of environmental protection” program of Ministry of natural
resources and environment. This research showed that green consumption plays an
important part to sustainable consumption - a pillar of green growth and sustainable
development. This is also a strategy that many countries in the world including
Vietnam are pursuing. Green consumption will encourage the development of green
goods and services markets, contributing to reducing waste generation, greenhouse
gas emissions, conserving natural resources and moving towards a sustainable
economy. There are also some studies of green consumption from the perspective of
social psychology such as "Green consumption behavior of Hanoi people by
Nguyen Huu Thu (2014). The author studied the factors affecting green
consumption behavior, from that providing psychological-educational measures to
enhance green consumption behavior, contributing to preventing and reducing
environmental pollution and climate change. Another one is the study by Pham Thi
Lan Huong (2013) on "Predicting the purchase intention of young consumers"
surveyed the cultural and psychological factors affecting the green consumption
behavior of young people. From these studies, it can be said that green consumption
is a prominent topic among Vietnamese researchers, however, the studies mostly
focus on macro general issues rather than any specific cases such as: a type of green
product or a single behavior related to green consumption of consumers. Therefore,
this study will serve as a case looking into a typical type of green product – cloth
bags for shopping.

16
2.1.3. Green products and related researches
The definitions of green products seem to bring out controversies among
researchers. Though there are numerous studies exploring aspects related to green
products, its definition is unclear and the literature is lacking a well and commonly
accepted explanation.
One of the comprehensive definitions of green products given by Ottoman (1998) is
presented in the following: “Green products are typically durable, non-toxic, made
of recycled materials, or minimally packaged. Of course, there are no completely
green products, for they all use up energy and resources and create by-products
and emissions during their manufacture, transport to warehouses and stores, usage,
and eventual disposal. So green is relative, describing products with less impact on
the environment than their alternatives.” Green products can also be defined as the
products which do not pollute the earth and can be recycled or reserved. Any
products whose content or packaging can lessen or limit the impact on environment
can be called green products as well. (Elkington and Makower, 1990). In another
research by Krause (1993), the results found that the consumers became more
concerned about their daily habits and the associated environmental impacts. Those
consumers did not just form awareness or intention, but actually transformed their
concern into active purchases of green products. However, there were still a
significant amount of people who were aware of the fact that their everyday
behaviors could harm the environment, still remained refusing to adopt the intention
to buy any green goods.
In short, mentioning green products, their characteristics must consider both these
points: production and usage. This means a product can be said to be “green” when
both how it is produced and used afterwards do not harm the environment. There
are ones still be considered green products though one of the related process can do
something to the nature, but the extent to which is certified and can be limited as
much as possible.

17
In the context of this research, cloth bags for shopping can be seen as a green
product since both of their production and using process meet the requirements of a
typical green product.
In research aspect, there are numerous studies focusing on green products. Cherian
and Jacob (2012) studied attitudes of consumers towards products that are
environmental-friendly. They proposed a conceptual framework in which different
attributes of consumers made impacts on consumer behaviors and gradually
affected consumer green buying patterns. The author concluded that there was a
strong need for a shift in customer behavior and their associated attitude towards a
greener one and also implied for further researchers to investigate factors that
motivate consumers to use environmental-friendly products. Sheikh, Mirza, Aftab,
and Asghar (2014) explored the behavior of customers towards green products by
investigating which factors affect green behavior and decision-making process. The
authors conducted a survey with 200 respondents via questionnaire and tested their
hypotheses using Pearson correlation. They found that the relationship between
brand and gender difference and consumer green behavior was quite weak at the
same time price, quality and green marketing show a positive relationship.
However, the above-mentioned studies focused more on the general term of green
products without specifying one. Considering cloth bags are one of the
environmental-friendly shopping bags and a green product, there are few studies
looked into what could drive customers to shift their behaviors relating to this type
of green goods.
2.1.4. Eco-friendly shopping bags and cloth bags
Since the reason why improving environment and limit pollution related to plastic
shopping bags is quite clear, what alternative should be considered for consumers
instead of plastic bags which are available everywhere with minimal cost still
remains a debatable question. According to citizensustainable.com, one plastic bag
is used only for around 12 minutes on average while its life span can last up to 1000

18
years. People usually argue that breaking them down to micro-plastic can help
reduce the life expectancy, they seem not realize the fact that if plastic bags are not
completely biodegraded well, the overall impact of dumping plastic bags into
environment will continue exist for a long time. It is undeniable that using an
alternative to get rid of one time use plastic bag is necessary.
According to Md. Abdul Jalil et al. (2013), while there are numerous alternative
choices for plastic bags, it is possible to categorize them into four following groups:
jute, paper, biodegradable and reusable bags.
 There are many types of jute bags, which all biodegradable and quite
compostable. In addition, they do not adversely affect the environment and their
production process is pretty straightforward and do not involve toxic chemicals.
However, in Vietnam, the availability of jute bags is not common and the cost of
production is quite high (because rather than made by machines in the factory,
lots of jute bags are hand-made with experts taking time with trivia work). This
facts lead jute bags to be considered an expensive item, a fashionable item rather
than an everyday life use for shopping and storage purpose.
 Before jute bags, paper bags are the most heard and well-known option to
replace plastic bags in shopping purpose. It is normally presented as a much
friendlier to environment than plastic bags. Its image of using recycled materials
and easy to dispose or send to landfill make paper bags the number one choice in
many supermarkets or stores. However, most people don’t consider them as a
perfect choice instead of plastic bags due to their inconvenience to recycle and
their durability. The materials make it is not handy to use paper bags in the
second time. In Vietnam, paper bags seem not a suitable option to travel with
while shopping since Vietnamese most popular vehicle is motorbikes.
 Biodegradable plastic bags are claimed to be a healthier option compared to
traditional plastic bags. Though marketers want to make consumers believe that
biodegradable plastic bags is a better choice, researches showed that it does not

19
only improve environment, but also add more harms and reduce environment
functions.
 Regarding reusable bags, there are not only one type. People can consider
different materials, which all reusable and suitable for storing with this type of
option. Plastic or cane woven baskets are claimed to be alternatives since they
are reusable and produced to be used for a long time, however, due to their
nature of materials and production, these types are not mentioned here. This
leads to the other option – cloth bags. These types are easy to carry, with cheap
cost and production, available pretty everywhere and can be washed and reused
in a quick time. There are many different types of fabric can be used to make
cloth bags (for example: cotton, canvas etc.), however in this research context,
the term “cloth bags” refer to all types of fabric with no differences. The aim for
cloth bags to be eco-friendly is (1) the time they are used is multiple, so life
expectancy is long (2) the production process is also simple, no harmful waste
causing pollution is produced (3) they also is easy to find and the price is not
high in order to spread among everybody.
In terms of researches about eco-friendly bags or related matters, researchers seem
to divide into two types: first is studying directly the issues around eco-friendly
bags and second is studying plastic bags, which cause environmental problems and
call for alternative like eco-friendly bags. Since the context of this research focuses
on cloth bag – a type of reusable environmental-friendly shopping bags, the studies
following summarized the related researches only.
Jalil et al. implemented theory of planned behavior to study on reusable shopping
bags in Indonesia. The authors showed in the results that using attitude to predict
consumer intention to use environmental-friendly product was accurate, however, it
was necessary to observe other factors that could affect attitude such as:
environmental knowledge, product appearance, perceived price and perceived value.
Another noticeable study named: “Consumer intention toward bringing your own

20
shopping bags in Taiwan: an application of ethics perspective and theory of
planned behavior” was conducted by Sheng-Hsiung Chang and Ching –Hsien Chou
in 2018. This study explored intention of consumer to bring their own shopping bag,
with the idea of switching plastic bags with consumer’s own shopping bags
(reusable ones), by combining two theories: Hunt and Vitell’s ethic perspectives
and theory of planned behavior. Testing by distributing questionnaires to
respondents, the authors also found some surprising result. Though three main
constructs of theory of planned behavior was normally considered strong predictors
for consumer’s intention, in this research, while attitude and perceived behavioral
control made strong effects on bring your own shopping bags intention, subjective
norm did not. By integrated two theories, they also showed the effect that only one
variable of this ethical perspective had positive impacts on three of them from
theory of planned behavior, and the other influenced directly on only perceived
behavioral control. From these literatures, it can be concluded that the trend to
investigate the issues regarding eco-friendly bags are becoming more and more
popular in the developing countries, but still not a significant amount, the situation
is the same in Vietnam.
2.1.5. Assumptions on using alternatives of plastic bags
The negative effects of plastic bags to environment and human health are no longer
a disputable question among people, however, which alternatives to limit the usage
of plastic bags really help the environment still put many scientists to doubt. Some
of the solutions to this challenges which are being used by both developed and
developing countries are charging extra fee for using plastic bags; encouraging
customers to use alternative – reusable eco-friendly shopping bags; imposing
additional taxes for using plastic products; holding educated events and classes for
people with different age ranges; and using media channels to spread instructive
information to as many people as possible to help improve awareness and change
behavior (Ari et al, 2017).

21
However, among these alternatives, using alternative reusable cloth bags are bring
into questions by some researchers, they want to explore more if “Cloth bags are
really better for the earth than plastic bags”. One report by Denmark’s Ministry of
Environment and Food published in 2018 mentioned the opposite. It is said that
plastic bags, according to some criteria, are far better than organic cloth bags for
environment. Another study “Life cycle assessment of supermarket carrierbags: a
review of the bags available in 2006” published in 2011 the UK Environment
Agency also reached the same conclusions. Is this really true? In order to
understand these results, it is necessary to consider under what perspectives and
criteria these researchers investigating the impact of cloth bags and plastic bags.
First of all, these studies assessing the life cycle of those types of bags: from the
very first process and raw materials the bags are made until they are disposed. The
criteria the bags are assessed also falls into some categories like following: climate
change, toxicity and climate changes. Secondly, David Tyler – a professor in the
department of Chemistry and Biochemistry emphasized that it is impossible for only
one alternative such as cloth bags to have better scoring and ranking than plastic
bags in every single categories and criteria mentioned in above researches.
(Alessandra, 2018). He also said that in order to clarify the best alternative for
plastic bags, the customers need to consider which aspect of the negative impact
they want to reduce. In this context, the environmental problems caused by plastic
bags in Vietnam mostly is being processed in a wrong way or discarded directly
into the seas and oceans. Therefore, in this case, the author considers cloth bags for
shopping as the best alternative for plastic bags relating to mitigating the amount of
plastic waste are being thrown into the oceans by reusing the shopping bags made
from cotton as many as possible. As far as the Danish study goes, the authors does
not include marine life endanger as an impact factor. At the end, it is the priority of
what the country needs most at the time of conducting research. And for Vietnam’s
government’s goals until 2020 is to reduce 65% of non-biodegradable plastic bags
used by that time, it is reasonable to consider an alternative that can last for much

22
longer time and limit the amount of related plastic garbage and does not harm the
marine life.
2.2. Consumer behavior and purchase intention
Customers play a leading part in marketing management and therefore, the main
purpose of marketing department in an organization is creating values for them,
presenting those values in its products and services, satisfying customers by
fulfilling their needs. Customers are the foundation for the success of organizations
since they are the ones who decide whether to buy the provided products and
services, which affect the organization’s existence in the long run. One organization
does marketing successfully, this means it creates a loyal and satisfied customer
base, knows its customers, and understands the customer behavior thoroughly.
Customer behavior is a familiar concept, however, there are different views and
explanations on this among researchers. Depending on the field of study,
researchers, economists or policy makers give us a variety of perspectives, both on
the nature and functions of the concept.
John C. Mowen and Michael Minor (1997) wrote in their book that customer
behavior is defined as the study of purchasing units and the exchange process
involved in the acquisition, consumption and sale of goods, services, experiences
and ideas. Schiffman and Kanuk (2007) took a similar approach in determining
consumer behavior: the behavior consumers express in finding, buying, selling,
using, evaluating products and services that they believe will meet their needs.
According to Kotler and Levy (1969), customer behavior is the behavior of
decision-making units in the procurement, use and handling, disposal of goods and
services.
From these definitions, customer behavior can be identified with three main
processes: purchase activities, consumption activities, and disposal activities.
Consumer behavior combines elements from different scientific researches such as:
psychology, sociology, anthropology and economics since each field can form a

23
certain type of factor that can affect the decision-making process of customers.
Because purchase intention is one step of consumer behavior when consider to buy
a certain product or service, it is important for us to understand the process of
consumer behavior before going to the details of customer purchase intention.
According to Swati (2010), consumer buying process includes five stages depicted
as the following figure:
Figure 2.1. Five stages of consumer buying process (Swati, 2010)
In which, towards the end of the thirst stage: when customers are considering the
alternatives, purchase intention will be formed. However, there are a lot of factors
that can affect the customer to form the intention, which is one of the strongest
predictors for forming an actual purchase decision. Purchase intention can be
understood as the extent to which a customer want to buy a certain product or
service. There are numerous factors that can make an impact on customer purchase
intention, and since in order for a customer to actually make a purchase, he or she
must form an intention to buy at first. This leads to the importance of investigating
the factors that can affect the intention.
Purchase decision
Information search
Evaluation of Alternatives
Problem recognition
Post purchase behavior

24
In academic world, the topic covers purchase intention is very common, especially
in green marketing area. Investigating factors, determinants, antecedents affecting
customer purchase intention or looking into a specific factor that make impact on
intention such as demographical, psychological or environmental factors seem to be
a trending approach. In this research, the variable purchase intention is explored
according to the definition by Ajzen and Fishbein (1975), which is associated with
theory of planned behavior.
There are many researchers chose theory of planned behavior for their studies
which is about green marketing and green consumption behavior, all of them can be
divided into three groups: first group focuses on explaining green consumption
intention (for example: Verma 2018 - An application of theory of planned
behavior to predict young Indian consumers' green hotel visit intention);
second group focuses on explaining green behaviors (for example: Carola Raab et
al, 2017 - Restaurant Managers’ Adoption of Sustainable Practices: An
Application of Institutional Theory and Theory of Planned Behavior); and third
group explain both intentions and behaviors of consumers (for example: A Model
of Green Consumption Behavior Constructed by the Theory of Planned
Behavior – Shwu-ing Wu 2014). However, in this research, consumer purchase
intention is investigated because cloth bags are treated in this case as a normal
consumption product, and in the view of companies offer more and more types of
cloth bags to the market, managers need to look at customer’s intention as a first
input to have an assessment of the product in the market.
According to a research named: “Sustainable food consumption among young
adults in Belgium: Theory of planned behaviour and the role of confidence and
values” by Iris Vermeir et al (2008), the author proposed the following model:

25
Figure 2.2. Conceptual framework based on Ajzen (1985) and Jager (2000) by
Iris Vermeir et al. (2008)
In this model, the author chose “intention to purchase sustainable dairy products” as
the final dependent variable. In the context of this study in particular, the final
dependent variable will be adopted as “Consumer purchase intention of cloth bags
for shopping”. This change is reasonable to make since cloth bags in this case is
considered the same consumption products as dairy products. One note that is in
this study, the term “consumer” is referred as the final customer who consume the
cloth bags for shopping after purchasing them, removing all of the customers who
are business (B2B model). So, customers are treated as final users – consumers of
the green product.
2.3. Theory of Planned behavior
Ajzen and Fishbein (l975) defined behavioral intention as the expression of each
person's willingness to perform a specified behavior, and it is considered a premise
that directly leads to behavior. With reasonable action theory (TRA), the authors
pointed out that: the most important factor determining human behavior is the
intention to carry out that behavior. Intention to implement behavior is governed by
two factors: one's attitude towards behavior and subjective norms related to that
behavior. Ajzen afterwards added another element (perceived behavioral control)
and from that behavioral intention is estimated based on: attitudes, subjective norms

26
and perceived behavioral control. Below is the figure showing theory of reasoned
action and theory of planned behavior with their determinants and relationship:
Figure 2.3. Theory of reasoned action and theory of planned behavior. In
which the broken arrow represent the added determinant for extending TRA
to TPB (Aijen et al, 1991)
Since then, TPB model has become one of the theoretical foundations and has been
applied to many different areas of research in term of behavioral intention,
especially in green marketing and green consumption behavior.
2.3.1. Attitudes towards behavior
According to Ajzen (1991), attitudes that lead to behavior are an individual's
assessment of the results obtained from performing that behavior. It also is the
degree to which that individual judges the behavior to be positive or negative.
Therefore, consumer attitudes affect behavioral intentions. Developing on the basis
of this concept, Chaniotakis, Lymperopoulos, and Soureli (2010) showed that the
attitude toward behavior is the judgment of the individual of whether the action is
worth the money spent or not. De Matos, Ituassu, and Rossi (2007) also mentioned
that attitudes that lead to consumer behavior are due to consumers believe that using
the product will bring a lot of benefits and that is the best choice for them. These
studies show that there is always a connection between attitude and behavioral

27
intention. The more positive the attitude, the easier it is for customers to generate
behavioral intention, in this case is the purchase intention toward cloth bag for
shopping. The attitudes of individual person play a crucial role in enhancing
environmental awareness and changing behavior. Hence, the first proposed research
hypothesis is:
H1: Attitude has a positive influential relationship with consumer purchase
intention of cloth bags for shopping. That means the higher/lower consumers
form an attitude toward purchasing cloth bags for shopping, the higher/lower
level of consumers forming intention to buy them.
2.3.2. Perceived behavioral control
Perceived behavioral control factor was added later by Ajzen (1985) to adjust the
TRA model. This factor plays an important role as an individual's self-assessment
of how difficult or easy it is to perform a behavior. The more resources and
opportunities they have, the less they think there will be obstacles and the greater
they can control the behavior. In an article by Spark et al (1997), the author pointed
out that perceived behavioral control includes the control factors both external and
internal to a person, in which perceived product availability can be considered an
external factor and perceived consumer effectiveness be internal factor. In this
context, “Perceived availability” is understood how easily a person feel that he/she
can get a certain product, and “perceived consumer effectiveness” is the level to
which a person feels that his contribution to use that product can help to solve a
certain problem. This means if a person is motivated to buy a product, the more
available that product is, the more likely he/she can form an intention to make a
purchase; and the more he/she feel that using a product is useful, the more chances
he/she will buy it afterward. Therefore, this is a relationship between both control
factors and behavioral intention. This is the same proposals from research by Iris
Vermeir et al. From this point of view, the following hypothesis is generated:

28
H2. Perceived consumer effectiveness has a positive influential relationship with
consumer purchase intention of cloth bags for shopping. That means the
higher/lower consumers perceive the effectiveness of cloth bags for shopping, the
higher/lower level of consumers forming intention to buy them.
H3. Perceived availability has a positive influential relationship with consumer
purchase intention of cloth bags for shopping. That means the higher/lower
consumers perceive the availability of cloth bags for shopping, the higher/lower
level of customer forming intention to buy them.
2.3.3. Subjective norms
Ajzen and Fishbein (1975) defined subjective norms as perceived pressure from
society to conduct or not to conduct certain behaviors. According to a research by
Taylor and Told (1995), this pressure comes from family, friends and other
important people who support or not that specific behavior. The above studies show
a positive correlation between subjective norms and behavioral intention, in this
case is purchase intention of cloth bag for shopping. Therefore, the more support
consumers receive from their influential sources, the more likely it is that the
intention of behavior will arise. On that basis, the hypothesis is proposed as
following:
H4. Subjective norms have a positive influential relationship with consumer
purchase intention of cloth bags for shopping. That means the higher/lower of
pressure/support consumers receive from their influential sources, the
higher/lower level of consumers forming intention to buy them.
2.4. Media exposure to environmental messages:
Most people agree on the importance of media towards spreading important
message to affect a community. In a research by Iman Khalid A. Qader, the author
proposed that media exposure has a significant positive relation on consumer’s
purchase intention, in his case the green electronic product. He also used theory of
planned behavior to explain his hypothesis on the problem. Media exposure in this

29
case is defined as the media coverage on environmental issues to community. This
thesis will adopt the same definition for media exposure, however, take another
approach with the model. Since Qader pointed out that there is a relationship
between media exposure and consumer purchase intention of green product, it is
possible that media exposure can interacts with consumer to moderate their
intention to buy a green product. This idea goes the same direction with Reynaldo et
al (2017), when the author treated media exposure, not as an independent variable
but a moderator which moderate the relations between constructs of theory of
planned behavior and consumer purchase intention of generic drugs. In the case of
cloth bags for shopping, it is likely that the more a person is exposed to
environmental message, the more intention he/she can form to purchase cloth bags
for shopping. Thus, the following hypothesizes are proposed:
H5. With greater media exposure to environmental messages:
(a) The positive relationship between attitude and consumer purchase
intention of cloth bags when shopping will be strengthened.
(b) The positive relationship between perceived consumer effectiveness and
consumer purchase intention of cloth bags when shopping will be
strengthened.
(c) The positive relationship between perceived availability and consumer
purchase intention of cloth bags when shopping will be strengthened.
(d) The positive relationship between subjective norm and consumer purchase
intention of cloth bags when shopping will be strengthened.

30
2.5. Final proposed research model
Figure 2.4. Proposed theoretical model
H4
H3
H2
H1
H5c
H5b
H5a
H5d
Attitude
Perceived consumer
effectiveness
Perceived
availability
Subjective Norms
Purchase Intention of
cloth bags for
shopping
Media Exposure
to environmental
message

31
CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
3.1. Research process
This research was conducted following the steps shown in the figure below:
Figure 3.1. Research process proposed by the author
Review the literature and
researches for inspiration
and develop research
problem
Summarize the related
researches and literature then
come up with the research
topic
Identify research objectives,
research scope, research
model and methodology
Finalize research objectives,
research scope, research
model and methodology
Identify research population,
sample and scale and
measurements
Measurements in customer
purchase intention; and
associated constructs in TPB
Plan to do survey and
develop questionnaire based
on previous studies
Proposed questionnaire and
survey plan
Advise with supervisors for
finalizing the plan for survey
and updating the
questionnaire
Final questionnaire
Pilot Test Final updated questionnaire
based on pilot answer
Collect data
Analyze and interpret data Analyze results by SPSS 20
Collect with questionnaires
both online and offline
Conclusions and suggestions
Research results, lessons,
limitations and future
research direction

32
3.2. Sampling and data collection
This study used primary data collected by the author for analyzing and obtaining
results and give suggestions.
PRIMARY DATA COLLECTION
The primary data were collected to investigate factors affecting customer purchase
intention of cloth bag for shopping, in which the data was collected in the following
ways:
- 60 questionnaires were distributed online in Hanoi via google doc file.
- The other 60 questionnaires were distributed in person by the author in main
supermarkets in Hanoi named: Big C; Co.op Mart and Vinmart.
SAMPLE SIZE
The proposed sample for this study is 120. Hair et al. (1998) proposed that the least
amount of sample that is recommended is equal to the total variables in a
questionnaire multiple by 5. This can be interpreted that each variable need at least
5 respondents. This is the lowest limit for the number of respondents. Due to limited
time and resources, this study will apply this for calculating the number of sample
size.
Considering this research is following quantitative approach, with the number of
variables is 22 in total, the sample size is above: 22*5= 110. Be aware of the
response can be invalid due to the respondents’ limitation, the final sample number
for distributing questionnaire is 120.
HOW TO CHOOSE SAMPLE
This study does not focus on finding the factors that affect customer purchase
intention of cloth bag for shopping, on the other hand, it concentrates on the
relationship between the constructs of TPB and also finding the moderator

33
(proposed in the model is media exposure to environmental message), the sampling
choosing method is convenience sampling. Because the survey cannot be
conducted throughout Vietnam in every city, in this study, the location was chosen
is Hanoi, which is the capital of Vietnam where many big supermarkets and
shopping malls are built and there is a large amount of population to investigate.
Convenience sampling was chosen for this study because of the limited time and
cost-effectiveness. For online survey, the respondents are chosen randomly based
on the easy approach characteristic. For offline survey in stores, respondents are
chosen randomly and invited to answer the questionnaire. Because the study
explores customer purchase intention of cloth bag for shopping, a type of product
that is widely available and can be used by everyone, the respondents are not
limited by any of their demographic characteristics.
3.3. Designing questionnaire
The measures of this research are obtained and modified based on similar ones from
previous studies. In which the measuring items of Attitude, Subjective Norm,
Perceived Availability, Perceived Consumer Effectiveness and Purchase Intention
were adopted from a questionnaire of a study by Bipul Kumar, 2012 named
“Theory of Planned Behavior Approach to Understand the Purchasing Behavior for
Environmentally Sustainable Products”. There is one notice that in this study, the
author used the term “Control on availability” instead of “Perceived availability”,
however, in this study, “Perceived availability” is used (the term comes from
another research name because it has a clearer meaning over “Control on
availability”. In the end, both of the term describes the same thing and both
Perceived Availability and Perceived Consumer Effectiveness are two variables
used to explain the original construct of TPB “Perceived behavioral Control”. The
final item “Media Exposure to Environmental Message” measures are adopted from
Tan, Qing, Teo & Ling (2015) which was adjusted by Reynaldo A. Bautisca, Jr. et
al (2017) in “The moderating effect of media exposure on the purchase intention of
generic drugs: An application of theory of planned behavior”. Besides, the

34
measuring items are adjusted so as to be suitable for the product: cloth bag for
shopping.
Questionnaire was designed in English then translated to Vietnamese for
Vietnamese respondents. After referencing from above literature, the questionnaire
of this research was divided into two parts, with the following content:
- Introduction part: includes the basic demographical questions to gather
respondents’ demographical data to describe them.
- Main part contains 22 measuring items in total using 5 point likert scale ranging
from strongly disagree to strongly agree for 5 following constructs: ATTITUDE,
SUBJECTIVE NORM, PERCEIVED AVAILABILITY, PERCEIVED
CONSUMER EFFECTIVENESS and PURCHASE INTENTION; and 5 point
frequency likert rating scale for MEDIA EXPOSURE TO ENVIRONMENT
MESSAGE.

35
Table 3.1. Measuring items for survey
Construct Items Sources
Attitude I believe that the use of cloth bags for
shopping by me will help in reducing
pollution and also help in improving the
environment.
Kumar, B., et
al. (2012)
I believe that use of cloth bags for
shopping by me will help in reducing
wasteful use of natural resources.
shopping by me will help in conserving
natural resources.
I feel good about myself when I use cloth
bags for shopping.
Perceived consumer
effectiveness
It is worthless for the individual consumer
to do anything about pollution.
When I buy cloth bags for shopping, I try
to understand how its use will affect the
environment and other consumers.
Since one person cannot have any effect
upon pollution and natural resources
problems, it doesn’t make any difference
what I do.
Each consumer’s behavior can have a
positive effect on society by buying

36
products sold by socially and
environmentally responsible companies.
Perceived
availability
I am familiar with the availability of cloth
bags for shopping in my locality.
I can get cloth bags for shopping
whenever I need them.
I have complete control over the number
of cloth bags for shopping that I need to
buy for personal use.
Subjective Norm My friends expect me to engage in cloth
bags usage for shopping behavior.
My family expects me to engage in cloth
My society expects me to engage in cloth
People can rely on me to make a positive
contribution to the society due to my cloth
Purchase intention I would like to use cloth bags for
shopping.
I would buy cloth bags for shopping if I
happen to see them in a store.
I would actively seek out cloth bags for
shopping in a store in order to purchase it.

37
I would patronize and recommend the use
of cloth bags for shopping.
Media exposure to
environmental
messages
During the past 30 days when you watch
TV, how often do you see environmental
messages?
Reynaldo A.
Bautisca, Jr. et
al (2017)
During the past 30 days, how often do you
see environmental messages in the
newspapers or magazines?
During the past 30 days, when you access
to the internet, how often do you see
environmental messages?
Details about likert scale for agreement extent and frequency extent are presented as
the tables below:
Table 3.2. Likert scale of Agreement extent
Strongly disagree Strongly agree
1 2 3 4 5
Strongly
disagree
Disagree Neither agree
nor disagree
Agree Strongly agree

38
Table 3.3. Likert scale of Frequency extent
Weakest frequency Strongest frequency
1 2 3 4 5
Never Rarely Occasionally Frequently Very
frequently
PILOT TEST
The questionnaire was sent to 10 people (who are highly educated people with
education level from university or above and have high awareness of environmental
problems) to give advice on the content and vocabulary chosen for each statement.
Generally, all pilot respondents were able to answer the questions, any words that
made them difficult to understand was sent back and modified afterwards before
sending the questionnaires to the main sample of this research.
3.4. Analyzing data plan
Firstly, the data will be input and then screened to find out the invalid ones, which
will be rejected. After that, the data will be encoded as the following tables:
Table 3.4. Encoded terms for data testing
No. Label Explanations
ATTITUDE
1. ATT1
I believe that the use of cloth bags
for shopping by me will help in
reducing pollution and also help in
improving the environment.

39
2. ATT2
shopping by me will help in
reducing wasteful use of natural
resources.
3. ATT3
shopping by me will help in
conserving natural resources.
4. ATT4
I feel good about myself when I
use cloth bags for shopping.
PERCEIVED CONSUMER EFFECTIVENESS
5. PCE1
It is worthless for the individual
consumer to do anything about
pollution.
6. PCE2
When I buy cloth bags for
shopping, I try to understand how
its use will affect the environment
and other consumers.
7. PCE3
Since one person cannot have any
effect upon pollution and natural
resources problems, it doesn’t
make any difference what I do.
8. PCE4
Each consumer’s behavior can
have a positive effect on society by
buying products sold by socially
and environmentally responsible
companies.

40
PERCEIVED AVAILABILITY
9. PA1
I am familiar with the availability
of cloth bags for shopping in my
locality.
10. PA2
I can get cloth bags for shopping
whenever I need them.
11. PA3
I have complete control over the
number of cloth bags for shopping
that I need to buy for personal use.
SUBJECTIVE NORM
12. SN1
My friends expect me to engage in
cloth bags usage for shopping
behavior.
13. SN2
My family expects me to engage in
cloth bags usage for shopping
behavior.
14. SN3
My society expects me to engage
in cloth bags usage for shopping
behavior.
15. SN4
People can rely on me to make a
positive contribution to the society
due to my cloth bags usage for
shopping behavior.
PERCHASE INTENTION

41
16. PI1
I would like to use cloth bags for
shopping.
17. PI2
I would buy cloth bags for
shopping if I happen to see them in
a store.
18. PI3
I would actively seek out cloth
bags for shopping in a store in
order to purchase it.
19. PI4
I would patronize and recommend
the use of cloth bags for shopping.
MEDIA EXPOSURE TO ENVIRONMENTAL MESSAGES
20. ME1
During the past 30 days when you
watch TV, how often do you see
environmental messages?
21. ME2
During the past 30 days, how often
do you see environmental
messages in the newspapers or
magazines?
22. ME3
During the past 30 days, when you
access to the internet, how often do
you see environmental messages?
The data will be cleaned and process by software SPSS 20 and Process Macro add-
on developed by Hayes for testing moderation effect. The processing data method
will be presented as below:

42
a. Reliability analysis by Cronbach’s alpha
Cronbach’s alpha measures the internal consistency (reliability) of a test or a scale.
When a study has multiple Likert question in questionnaire, it is necessary to
determine if the scale is reliable. In this case, it is common to use Cronbach’s alpha.
The value of alpha (α) ranges between [0,1]. Theoretically, the higher the value, the
better but also not always the case. If cronbach’s Alpha coefficient is too large
(about 0.95 or more), it shows that there are many variables in the scale that do not
differ at all, and this phenomenon is called duplication or redundancy. Based on
guidelines by George & Mallery (2010), alpha is more than 0.9 can be considered
the best and lower than 0.5 is poor.
In order to calculate Cronbach’s alpha for a scale, the scale must have at least
three measuring items. Nunnally & Bernstein (1994) mentioned that item-total
correlation also plays a vital role to perform the correlation of one variable with
others in the same scale. The low level of smaller than 0.3 for item-total correlations
will be removed while more than 0.3 will be accepted.
b. Exploratory factor analysis
Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) is a quantitative analysis method used to reduce a
set of many variables k into a smaller variable set F (F < k) to make them
meaningful but still contain the content of the original set. (Hair et al. 2013).
There are some criteria to consider when doing exploratory factor analysis:
 To use EFA, it is necessary to use a large sample size, but the problem of
determining the appropriate sample size is complicated. Researchers often rely
on previous researches. Here are a few ideas and suggestions from factor
analysis experts. , we can consider:
 The number of observations (sample size) must be at least 4 to 5 times the
number of variables in factor analysis.

43
 Hair et al. (2013) suggested that to use EFA, the minimum sample size should
be 50, preferably 100. Hair suggested trying to maximize the observation rate on
each measurement variable of 5: 1, which means that for every measurement,
there is a minimum of 5 observations.
 Factor loading > 0.5
 Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin to test the sampling adequacy of factor analysis. The value
of KMO must reach 0.5 or more (0.5 ≤ KMO ≤ 1) which is a sufficient condition
for the factor analysis to be appropriate. If this value is less than 0.5, then factor
analysis is unlikely to be suitable for the study data set.
 Bartlett’s test of sphericity: compares the correlation matrix to the identity
matrix, which means it if there is a redundancy between variables that can be
summarized with some factors. The indicator is sig Bartlett’s Test < 0.05
c. Regression analysis
Regression analysis is a modeling technique for analyzing the relationship between
a real-valued dependent variable Y and one or more independent variables X1, X2,
X3,…., Xk (Ragsdale, 2007). In order to do regression analysis, it is necessary to find
out a regression function that represents the relationship between the independent
and dependent variables, from that the influential impacts can be observed.
The regression function will be as the following in this study:
Y = b0 + b1 X1 + b2 X2,……+ bk Xk + ε
Where:
- Y = Scores on the Customer Purchase Intention of Cloth bag for shopping
- X1, X2,……, Xk = Scores on the constructs of TPB (Attitude; Subjective
Norms; Perceived Availability; Perceived Consumer Effectiveness)
- b1, b2 ……, bk = Regression co-efficient of independent variables
- b0 = an intercept

44
- ε = an error term
First step when doing the analysis is to test assumption that the relations between
variables is linear. Because there are multiple independent variables, multi-
collinearity checking is needed, which shown by VIF number (Variance inflation
factor ). If the model has VIF < 2, it is accepted while >2, the variable which has
multi-collinearity need removing from the model.
Other assumptions need checking are the error ε, mean value and constant
variances for a model to be acceptable. Goodness-of-fit is also important to check
for a model to have a high fit for analyzing.
d. Moderation Analysis
According to Hayes (2013), the moderation effect can be illustrated in the following
figure:
Figure 3.2. Conceptual Model of simple moderation (Hayes, 2013)
In which: X is the independent variable
Y is the dependent variable
M is the moderator
The effect of the independent variable X on the dependent variable Y is regulated
by variable M, which means variable M affects the direction or intensity of the
relation between predictor X and dependent variable Y. In this case, the variable M
is called the moderator variable of the term X, which is affected by Y. Note that M
is not a predictor for Y in moderation model, but an interaction.
X Y
M

45
According to Dardas and Ahmad (2015), a model with moderating variable can lead
to the following results:
(1) Increase the impact of predictor on the outcome
(2) Decrease the impact of predictor on the outcome
(3) Reverse the impact of predictor on the outcome
Through some algorithms, the above moderator variable model can be reinterpreted
as follows:
Figure 3.3. Statistical Model of simple moderation (Hayes, 2013)
The figure can be explained by the following equation:
Y = i + b1X + b2M + b3XM + eY
In which: i is the regression intercept
eY is the error when estimating Y
b1,b2, and b3 represents the coefficient of the effect from X to Y, M to
Y, and XM to Y respectively
In order to assess the moderation effect, PROCESS MACRO v3.3 developed by
Hayes will be used to test regression. With the equation, when running multivariate
b3
b2
X
M
X*M
Y
b1

46
regression, the dependent variable is Y, the three independent variables are X, M,
XM, then sig. of XM variable is brought into consideration.
If sig. <5% (0.05): it is statistically significant, it will be concluded that the M
variable moderates the relationship between the variable X and the variable Y.
As for the direction of the moderated relationship, we rely on the coefficient c3 of
the XM variable to conclude. As the figure shows, if the coefficient c3> 0, and X> 0,
then when the variable M increases, the relation between variables X and Y
increases.
However, multiplying or turning X * M leads to some disadvantages, because it can
be multi-collinear between variables, so for the test to be valid, mean centering
technique is used in SPSS to help.

47
CHAPTER 4. DATA PRESENTATIONS AND FINDINGS
4.1. Data description
Table 4.1. Descriptive Statistics of 113 participant
N Minimum Maximum Mean Std. Deviation
ATT1 113 1 5 4.39 .891
ATT2 113 1 5 4.14 1.025
ATT3 113 1 5 4.10 .935
ATT4 113 1 5 4.03 1.004
SN1 113 1 5 3.19 .854
SN2 113 1 5 3.08 1.019
SN3 113 1 5 3.69 .983
SN4 113 1 5 3.67 .881
PA1 113 1 5 2.65 1.148
PA2 113 1 5 2.81 1.122
PA3 113 1 5 3.00 1.134
PCE1 113 1 5 2.50 1.218
PCE2 113 1 5 3.15 1.054
PCE3 113 1 5 2.44 1.187
PCE4 113 1 5 3.94 .909
PI1 113 1 5 3.75 1.014

48
PI2 113 1 5 3.47 .964
PI3 113 1 5 3.26 1.059
PI4 113 1 5 3.64 1.070
ME1 113 1 5 3.19 1.125
ME2 113 1 5 3.16 1.192
ME3 113 1 5 3.47 1.218
Valid N (listwise) 113
A summary of the descriptive statistics is presented in table above. For each item
the minimum, maximum, mean and standard deviation are taken into consideration.
Among 120 questionnaires were distributed and collected both online and offline.
The received answered are screened to find out the invalid, then among 120
questionnaires, 113 samples are valid as in the table above and 7 missing samples.
Data analysis excluded 7 missing samples because participants did not provide
sufficient information or they chose the same option for all questions.
Table 4.2. Gender distributions among 113 participants
Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent
Valid
Female 73 64.6 64.6 64.6
Male 40 35.4 35.4 100.0
Total 113 100.0 100.0
Tải bản FULL (115 trang): https://bit.ly/3U3wpG0
Dự phòng: fb.com/TaiHo123doc.net

49
From Table 4.2 above, it can be seen that 113 participants who answered
questionnaires are not distributed equally about gender. The number of females is
bigger than the number of males. There are 73 females and 40 males sent their
responses back which correspond to 64.6% and 35.4%, respectively.
Figure 4.1. Age distribution among 113 participants
Among 113 people answered the questionnaire, the main participants are 26 to 35
years old. They account for 59 people or 52.2%. The second largest group is in age
of under 25. The quantity of this group is 50 people which represent 44.2% of total.
The group of 36 years old and older only accounts for 3.5% of the total with 4
participants. It can be seen that, most of participants are young working people with
age range is from 26 to 35 years old.
Tải bản FULL (115 trang): https://bit.ly/3U3wpG0
Dự phòng: fb.com/TaiHo123doc.net

50
Figure 4.2. Education level distribution among 113 participants
As the pie chart shows, a great deal of participants is in University and Graduate
School level. The largest number of participants belongs to University level, with
the ratio is 64.6% with 73 people. Participants who have Graduate School stand for
a smaller volume of 29 participants. The ratio number corresponds to 25.7%. Next
is the number of participants who are high school students (indicated in “Others”
label) with 6 people – 5.3%.
Participants who have Vocational Training and College level are the smallest
amount, 3% (with 3 participants) and 1.8% (with 2 participants) respectively. It can
be seen that education level of survey participants is relatively homogenous.
Table 4.3. Income distributions among 113 participants
Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent
Valid
Under 15M 87 77.0 77.0 77.0
15M - 35M 24 21.2 21.2 98.2
36M and higher 2 1.8 1.8 100.0
Total 113 100.0 100.0
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