Nghiên cứu sinh Nguyễn Thị Thu Trang bảo vệ luận án tiến sĩ
ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE DISSERTATION
Dissertation title: Attitude-Intention-Behaviour gap in organic food purchase
Specialization: Business Administration (E-PhD) Specialization code: 9340101
PhD candidate: Nguyen Thi Thu Trang PhD Id. NCS40.10TA
Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyen Thi Phuong Linh
Institution: National Economics University
Original contributions on academic and theoretical aspects
This thesis has made significant theoretical contributions. First, this dissertation offers a possible explanation for the difference between attitudes and intentions towards the organic foods purchase. The dissertation employed the behavioral reasoning theory (BRT) (Westaby, 2005) to examine the role of both reasons for and reasons against, which are neglected in the previous theories, in order to explain the difference between attitudes and intentions. Further, the dissertation extended the BRT by including subjective norm in the model as a moderator of the attitude-intention relationship.
Second, the dissertation also provides contributions to the existing body knowledge of the disagreement between intention and behaviour towards organic food purchase. The dissertation provides an investigation of the volitional phase in organic food purchase which is mostly neglected in the literature. The dissertation incorporates the key factors in the HAPA model (Schwarzer, 2008) and the social cognitive theory (Bandura, 1997) on building a holistic model of volitional phase, in which intention is more effectively transformed into actual performance in the context of organic food purchase.
Recommendations derived from the findings of the dissertation
Findings from this dissertation provides several new recommendations for marketers and the government. First, marketers should conduct organic food marketing campaigns which keep emphasizing product distribution and communication of the benefits of organic food purchase, particularly nutrition content and naturalness, instead of strategies that have been usually recommended to foster social influence. Marketers should remind consumers of their plans as well as enhance their confidence in forming plans and transferring these plans into actual behaviour. To remind consumers of their plans, marketers may assist organic consumers through the use of "situational forces" including, for instance, employing a mix of outside and inside the store visual media to remind shoppers of their organic intention, or marketers may diminish the perceived obstacles in terms of high price and unavailability, like persuading customers that a small extra price is worth a great deal to their health; selling online or via well-established supermarkets and and grocery stores.
Second, it is also possible to draw implications for the government with regard to the process of formulating policies that are pertinent to offer support for the organic food purchase. Recently, the government has implemented several policies and initiatives to support the growth of the organic food market. However, intervention strategies that are designed to improve consumer attitude towards the organic food purchase may be desirable in the long term, the government should provide consumers with necessary informations to encourage them to become more involved in organic food purchase. Educational and communicative initiatives, facilitated through mass media platforms (e.g., television, advertisements, and radio) as well as social media channels (e.g., Facebook), ought to be collaboratively designed in order to enhance consumers’ awareness of the health benefits associated with organic food.
