LONG TERM ORIENTATION AND ATTITUDE TOWARD GREEN... (Chairy) 167
LONG TERM ORIENTATION AND ATTITUDE TOWARD GREEN
PRODUCT
Chairy
Tarumanagara University, Jalan S. Parman No. 1 Jakarta 11440, Indonesia
e-mail: chairy@tarumanagara.ac.id
Abstrak
Produk hijau memperoleh perhatian yang besar dari para pemasar akhir-akhir ini. Agar pemasaran produk hijau dapat sukses, para pemasar perlu mengetahui faktor-faktor yang berkaitan dengan sikap konsumen terhadap produk hijau. Tujuan studi ini adalah untuk menyelidiki hubungan antara orientasi jangka panjang dengan sikap konsumen terhadap produk hijau. Sampel penelitian ini adalah mahasiswa Universitas Tarumanagara Jakarta. Melalui analisis korelasi, studi ini memperlihatkan bahwa orientasi jangka panjang memiliki hubungan yang positif dengan sikap konsumen terhadap produk hijau. Hasil studi ini mendukung pendapat yang mengatakan bahwa dalam mempopulerkan konsumsi produk hijau, para pemasar perlu memperhatikan faktor budaya yang salah satunya adalah orientasi jangka panjang.
Kata Kunci: orientasi jangka panjang, sikap terhadap produk hijau, analisis korelasi
INTRODUCTION
Environmentally friendly consumption has become major concern of the government of Indonesia. Festivals and conferences held recently was the indicator of the seriousness of the government of Indonesia in this field (Chairy, 2012). These activities are part of the government efforts to preserve the environment and enhance Indonesian consumer welfare. The government also participated in 20th APEC Economic Leader Meeting in Vladivistok and reached consensus on the development of and promoting green growth (http://apec.org/Meeting-Papers/Ministerial-Statements/Annual/2012/2012_amm.aspx). This strong support on green growth reaffirmed the commitment to popular green consumption in Indonesia. lead to specific behavior that correspondent to the marketers’ expectation (Solomon, 2009). Consumer attitude toward green product is considered as a strong predictor for actual consumption of green product. That’s why the study of consumer attitude toward green product has always been an important research area in green marketing.
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For instance, Hofstede’s cultural dimensions (Hofstede, 2001) play an important role in consumer preferences. One of these cultural dimensions is long term orientation (Bearden, Money, & Nevins, 2006). In term of green product, cultural factor such as long term orientation is predicted to have a positive relationship with consumer attitude toward green product. The purpose of this study is to link the attitude to cultural dimension. This study also tried to gain more knowledge about the consumer attitude toward green overtime. It is general because it applies to more than a momentary event. Attitudes can offer a prediction about a person’s future actions. Consumers’ attitude is a directly influenced factor that affects the consumers’ buying willingness (Solomon, 2009). Ajzen and Fishbein (1980) describe attitude towards a behavior as a person’s evaluation of a specified behavior involving an object or outcome. The study about consumer attitude is important because attitude towards a behavior has been found to be strongly related to a particular behavior. It means that attitude is an essential factor in explaining consumer behavior.
Smith, Roy, and Potter (1996) define green product as a product which has a reduced impact on the natural environment arising from its materials, production, use or disposal – as well as satisfying the more usual design factors such as performance, aesthetics, cost, etc. Further, they state that consuming green product reflects a conscious concern for preserving the environment.
Attitude toward green product reflects overall consumer evaluation on green product. If consumer perceives the green product as a product which would enhance their welfare, they will have a positive attitude toward green product. Although many studies report a low correlation between a person’s reported attitude toward something and his/her actual behavior toward it, some other studies report the opposite results. One study on environmental issues and marketing activities found that people who express greater conviction in their feeling regarding environmentally responsible behaviors show greater consistency between attitudes and behavioral intentions (Solomon, 2009). So it is reasonable if consumers have a favorable attitude toward green product, they will be likely to consume the green product.
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Long Term Orientation
An increasing volume of research addresses cultural, social, and psychological factors in consumers' demand for green product (Hartmann & Apaolaza-Ibanez, 2012). In term of culture, Hofstede (2001) has developed six dimensions of culture to analyze national culture of a country. Originally, in the late 1970s, Hofstede surveyed more than 116,000 IBM employees in 40 countries about their work-related values. He found that employee vary on several dimensions of national culture. These dimensions are individualism- collectivism, masculinity-femininity, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, long-short term orientation, and indulgence-restraint. Further, many researchers extended these cultural dimension into other fields. For instance, Aaker and William (1998) stated that consumer behavior is also influenced by the culture in which the consumers operate. Cultural orientation is found affected product and brand evaluation. Consumer researchers use these dimensions to predict consumer behavior (Bearden, et al, 2006).
In this research, the focus is given to long term orientation dimension. It focuses on the degree of a society’s long term devotion to traditional values. People in cultures with long term orientation tend to look to the future and value thrift, persistence, and tradition. Hofstede (2001) suggest that long term orientation fosters behavior oriented toward future reward. In term of green marketing, Bearden et al (2006) argue that long term orientation is a salient aspect of national culture values that affects consumer decision making processes. It is argued in this research that the stronger the value of long term orientation, the more favorable the consumer attitude toward green product.
So far, only limited number of studies explored the role of long term orientation in green consumption context. This research tried to fill this gap by examining the relationship between long term orientation and attitude toward green product and proposing the hypotheses: there is a positive relationship between long term orientation and attitude toward green product
METHOD
The sample of this research was 100 undergraduate students (61 females) of Tarumanagara University. This sample was drawn using convenience sampling. The questionnaire was developed by adapting scales from previous research. The attitude toward green product scale was adapted from the work of Chan (2001). Statements for this variable are “I like the idea of purchasing green product’, “Purchasing green product is a good idea”, “I have a favorable attitude toward green product.” The long term orientation scale was adapted from the work of Kopalle, Lehmann, and Farley (2010). The statements included are “I plan for a long term”, I work hard for success in the future”, “I don’t mind giving up today’s fun for success in the future”. These two scales were tried out with 30 samples from the same population. All reliability sores are acceptable, 0.72 and 0.86 respectively. Correlation analysis was used to test whether there is a relationship between attitude toward green product and long term orientation.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
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correlation between long term orientation and attitude toward green product at 0.01 level (r = 0.711). It means that the stronger the long term orientation values, the more favorable the attitude toward green product. In general, this research support the previous finding that stated attitude toward a product or consumer behavior has a positive relationship with cultural values (Aaker and William, 1998). Specifically, this finding supported the idea that long term orientation has a relationship with consumer decision making (Bearden et al, 2006). In this case, long term orientation value significantly related to attitudes toward green product.
This research finding showed a need for marketer to consider cultural values in enhancing consumer attitude toward green product. In other words, to succeed in marketing green product, marketers should take into account long term orientation in designing their marketing strategy.
This research only investigated the relationship between long term orientation and attitude toward green product. Future research should examine the relationship between other cultural values and attitude toward green product. Future research needs also to investigate the relationship between cultural values, attitude toward green product, and intention to purchase green product.
CONCLUSION
This correlation study showed that long term orientation has a significant relationship with attitude toward green product. The stronger the magnitude of long term orientation a consumer has, the more favorable the consumer attitude toward green product. A society with high value of long term orientation will be a promising market for green product marketers because they have a favorable attitude toward green product. Since fostering green consumption is one of the government’s objectives, the public policy maker should find ways of how to have a long term orientation society. Public policy makers could also design activities that would enhance the value of long term orientation.
REFERENCES
Bearden, William O., R. Bruce Money, and Jennifer L. Nevins. 2006. Measure of long-term orientation: Development and validation. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 34 (3): 456–67.
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Chan, R.Y.K. 2001. Determinants of Chinese consumers’ green purchase behavior. Psychology & Marketing, 18 (4): 389-413.
Chairy. 2012. Spirituality, self transcendence, and green purchase intention in college students, Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 57: 243 – 246.
Hartmann, P. and Vanessa Apaolaza-Ibáñez. 2012. Consumer attitude and purchase intention toward green energy brands: The roles of psychological benefits and environmental concern, Journal of Business Research, 65: 1254-1263
Hofstede, Geert. 2001. Culture’s consequences, 2nd ed., Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Kim, Y. 2011. Understanding green purchase: the influence of collectivism, personal values and environmental attitudes, and the moderating effect of perceived consumer effectiveness. Seoul Journal of Business, 17 (1): 65-92.
Kopalle, Praveen K., Donald R. Lehmann, and John U. Farley. 2010. Consumer expectations and culture: The effect of belief in Karma in India. Journal of Consumer Research, 37 (Aug): 251-263.
Smith, M.T., R. Roy, and S. Potter. 1996. The commercial impacts of green product development, The Design Innovation Group, Faculty of Technology (Design), The Open University, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, (UK).
