Antecedents Influencing Purchase Intention of Halal Labelled Personal Care Products in Malaysia

Abstract

• Law has not yet defined personal care product, however, people often refer it to wide selection of products commonly sold at departmental stores and pharmacies. Some examples of such products are shampoos, body care, anti-perspirant, make-up items, skin moisturizers, mouthwash, toothpaste, hair color, lip balm, treatment oil for acne and many more. This paper investigates the factors that influence the intention to purchase Halal certified personal care products by Muslim consumers and determine the factors influencing Muslim consumers' purchase intention regarding halal personal care products. This paper also investigates their awareness level of Halal certified non-food related products in Malaysia. This study examines the connectivity between branding, subjective norms, halal labelling and its awareness for affecting Muslims' intention to purchase on halal-certified personal care products in the country. This research involves 450 set of questionnaires distributed to Muslims friends and family staying in Malaysia (East and West) from 2nd April until 3rd May 2019. The questionnaires are taken prior research consisting of the respondents' demographic factors using a 5-point Likert scale questionnaire basis. Respondents are required to respond to a set of 28 questions, enabling the researcher to analyse those antecedents that influence purchase intentions of halal-labelled personal care products in Malaysia. The researcher collated a total of 297 responses and scrutinized the data through SPSS. Elements such as Factor Analysis, Reliability Test, Simple Multiple Regression and One-way ANOVA were deployed to examine the collated information. The results show that Halal awareness and subjective norms play correlated influence on purchase intention whereas the branding and Halal logo are not a strong indicator. The Halal concept is more than just production process and ingredients used in products but includes the delivery of goods, which must be Shariah compliant. With this study, it is projected that Muslims could be more aware and careful when purchasing Halal-labelled products. Although the Halal logo is a symbol of assurance but Muslims should still proactively examine the ingredients especially those that are produced and imported from overseas.