Factors Influencing Green Purchase Intention Among Food Retail Consumers: An Empirical Study on Uttar Pradesh

Background

Environment issues such as global warming, climate change, extinction of animals and plant species, and depletion of limited natural resources are the major concern of all the societies for the last two-three decades. The “environment” more specifically the green environment plays a significant role in influencing human roles and their activities, making it one of the marketing issues (Moisander,2007). Today, marketers' primary concern is the environment and SDGs are at the heart of policy makers globally due to which green consumerism became one of seventeen sustainable development goals based on consumers' belief in the consequences of their actions. One cannot side-line the importance of sustainable and green consumption.

Green Consumption refers to environmentally conscious consumption. Environmentally conscious purchasing, as well as the utilization and correct disposal of various products and services, must be carried out correctly, and environmentally responsible strategies must be followed both by consumers and producers. Through adopting green eco-friendly consumption practices and only purchasing green products, goods and services, consumers can lessen the negative impact that they have on the environment as well as to avert environmental degradation. With the increased environment awareness and green demand trends of products, only 3 percent of the total market share is represented by eco-friendly products (Bray et al., 2011). These findings suggest that consumers of today continue to ignore the environmental impacts of product acquisitions (Mohr et al., 2001).

The authorities in India have therefore changed their activities to be more eco-friendly because of global environmental awareness. By launching environmentally responsible initiatives and measures since start of 21^st century, the higher authorities demonstrated significant support for environment friendly projects. By diversifying the responsible economy and increasing productivity in the face of environmental challenges, the nation is now regarded as one of those striving for a green economy (Jain & Kaur, 2006). Over the last few years in India, the market specifically for green food products has been growing at a quick pace from the fact that many organic food stores are opening in India. Due to increasing health concern among Indian consumers in major cities have been the major important factor contributing to rapid growth in the market. The market of green food in India is likely to grow at a CAGR of over 25 percent. (Indian Organic Food Market Forecast & Opportunities, 2020). Despite all these efforts and initiatives that have been taken by Indian government, the knowledge about behavioural trends and consumers intention to buy green food products is still restricted among Indians.

Food retail stores are amongst the key stakeholders of natural resources through sustainable production, which could help to transform routine corporate operations into more environmentally friendly ones (Claro, Neto, and Claro, 2013). Thus, with varied degrees of success, majority of merchants are incorporating green practices into their daily operations. To achieve this, a detailed understanding of green production and consumption is required by both food retailers and food retail consumers for implementation of green practices and green purchase intentions respectively. Therefore, it is important to understand the food retail consumers purchase intentions of food products as well to get a thorough grasp of the elements influencing consumers’ decision to buy green products.

Environmental responsible purchasing is essential since impulsive purchases of products and services can seriously harm the planet and the environment. 40 percent of the environmental harm was caused by consumer-related household purchases (Grunert, 1995). Consumer intention to purchase is a crucial topic, irrespective of consumerism (Chen, Chen, and Tung, 2018). Green purchasing refers to the purchasing of environmentally responsible goods and is most responsible to measure intention to make green purchases and behaviour. There is a segment of society that is really interested and supportive of the environment. It is also impossible to overlook the fact that a sizable portion of society continues to be either unconcerned or uninformed of their environment. However, a lot of factors influence a consumers’ decision to buy organic food goods.

This study contributes to enrich the theoretical consumer behaviour using Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) in Indian literature review. In addition, the study's findings will assist organizations, marketers, and policy makers in comprehending the behavioural dimensions of customers and putting the orientation procedures into action. With a better understanding of these factors, more businesses and marketers will be attracted, leading to the creation and improvement of green marketing strategies to draw in more green clients and put methods in place to encourage green buying.