Abstract
The consumption of dietary supplements (DSs) has been steadily increasing in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak in most countries. Consumer purchase intention towards DSs is expected to be of concern to many companies in the pharmaceutical industry. This study extends the Theory of Planned Behaviour by adding health consciousness and perceived price in the model to investigate its effect on consumer purchase intention towards DSs during the COVID-19 outbreak. A questionnaire-based survey was distributed via an online survey to 207 respondents. Results from multiple regression analysis revealed that consumer attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control, and health consciousness contributed significantly to purchase intention towards DSs. Perceived price did not have an impact on intention. Further investigation revealed that favourable attitudes towards DSs were the most important contributor towards purchasing DSs during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Highlights
Despite poor business operations and a low level of acceptance by customers, the demand for dietary supplements (DSs) continues to expand steadily each year (Birruntha, 2019)
The result in this study showed that there is a significant relationship between health-consciousness and DSs purchase intention during the pandemic
Understanding factors that affect the purchase intention towards dietary supplements are important for businesses to build their marketing strategies and to have a more effective targeted marketing campaign
Summary
Despite poor business operations and a low level of acceptance by customers, the demand for dietary supplements (DSs) continues to expand steadily each year (Birruntha, 2019). Interest in immunity-positioned vitamins and DSs have grown significantly since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, as many customers look for products that offer the promise of broad disease prevention (Parikh et al, 2020). The market size of DSs has seen an increase in Malaysia (Birruntha, 2019). The mineral form of supplement products, calcium, omega 3 fish oil products, and botanicals are popular DSs (Phillips and Rimmer, 2013). The historical market size of multi-vitamins consumption of DSs in Malaysia grows steadily from RM 2.22Bil in 2015 to RM3.57Bil in 2020 (Euromonitor, 2019b). Previous research on factors affecting the decision to purchase DSs is still under-explored in Malaysia. The COVID-19 treatment options have raised many concerns among populations across the world (International Monetary Fund, 2020), leading to many attempts to find alternative options to prevent the spread of the disease or to mitigate the progression of the infection, including a greater emphasis on preventive measures to improve immunity and minimize the risk of infection (Alyami et al, 2020)
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