THE CONSUMER DECISION-MAKING STYLES AND CONSUMERS’ PURCHASE INTENTION OF BABY FOOD IN MALAYSIA

Abstract

The baby food market in Malaysia has been growing rapidly over the past few years, and the Malaysian consumer decision-making styles on the baby food have permanently shifted. Consumers need to be periodically analyzed from several aspects, otherwise, the enterprises would come across difficulties during the marketing process and it could lead to antipathy of consumers and declining sales of the enterprises.

The research aims to investigate the consumer decision-making style on baby food in Malaysia, and four suitable decision-making styles were selected during this research, including quality consciousness, brand consciousness, price consciousness and brand loyalty.

The research adopts the quantitative approach, and is conducted in the form of questionnaire survey in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The questionnaires were sent to 200 respondents and data was collected for analysis.

This research shows that consumers’ brand consciousness has most significant influence on their purchase intention towards baby food product, next followed by quality consciousness, which has a negative influence on the purchase intention towards baby food product. Brand loyalty has a positive impact on the purchase intention towards baby food product, while price
consciousness is not the main factor influencing consumers’ purchase intention towards baby food. Based on the findings, the baby food companies are recommended to develop supporting marketing programs to enhance brand awareness, establish a favorable, strong and unique brand association in consumers’ memory. Furthermore, the companies should ensure the
reliability and safety of the baby food products, and set a reasonable price to attract consumers.