Health Awareness and Price Sensitivity as Predictors of Consumer’s Purchase Attitude Towards Soft Drinks

Abstract

This study investigates the association of both health hazards awareness and price sensitivity of soft drinks with consumer’s purchase attitude in Saudi Arabian market. The study also investigates whether there is a moderating role for each of consumer’s gender, age, education, and monthly income on the two studied relationships. The study has been conducted on 865 respondents of soft drinks consumers in Saudi Arabia and an online self-administered survey has been used to collect primary data from the participants. The study findings revealed a statistically significant negative associations of both soft drinks’ health hazards awareness and price sensitivity with consumer’s purchase attitude. Heath hazards awareness is higher than the price sensitivity in predicting the consumer’s purchase attitude. Hence, the consumer’s attitude is more responsive to health hazards awareness than the price sensitivity. The study also found that consumer’s gender, age, education, and income do not significantly moderate the relationships between either of health hazards awareness or price sensitivity and the purchase attitude of soft drinks. Thus, the study recommends marketers to adopt social orientation in doing marketing activities and do best to develop healthier soft drinks. Furthermore, marketers should be careful when setting soft drinks’ prices because of consumer sensitivity. Optimization of soft drinks’ cost structure can help in respect to price sensitivity. Finally, the undifferentiated marketing strategy is suitable for targeting in the Saudi market concerning gender, age, education, and income.

Keywords

• soft drinks
• awareness
• sensitivity
• purchase attitude
• empirical research
• consumer behavior
• purchase decision