Customer Purchase Intention in Online Green Product Brand Community

Abstract

Due to the increasing awareness of people's environment in choosing a product, resulting in high competition in green product industry. The impact of this phenomenon is also faced by early-stage start-ups in the green product industry, which has limited funds and resources. Seeing this problem, there is one strategy that has a high potential to increase customer purchase intention and provide good performance in increasing traction and product/service purchase in many large companies, namely a brand community that can be formed in online brand community (OBC). Although there are many benefits offered by Online brand community (OBC), unfortunately, there are still few green product brands that implement OBC in Indonesia. Thus, there are hardly any benchmarking models for the application of OBC, and comprehensive research on how the purchase intention in an OBC is unheld. To be able to fill the information gap and explain purchase intention in an OBC meticulously, previous research said that customer motivation and satisfaction are related to purchase intention. Therefore, this research will also look for the customers' motivation to participate in OBC to be able to identify motivation fulfilment and known as satisfaction on OBC. The satisfaction of OBC will bring this research to be able to pinpoint customer purchase intention. This research will be conducted using a qualitative method (case study strategy in two green product OBCs in Indonesia) with semi-structured interviews with informants that have different levels of participation in OBC. From the results of data analysis obtained, it can be identified 14 customer motivations to participate in green product OBC such as information need, relatability, social integrative need, etc. It can be concluded that the fulfilment of those motivations are reflecting the level of satisfaction on OBC and also has a significant effect on purchase intention in green products industry.