The key finding of this paper indicated that Social status and Perceived value have a positive influence on the purchase intention of the customers on non-luxury private cars. From the tense competition in Thailand's private car market, the car companies need to find out both negative and positive factors that affect the purchase intention of their customers in order to persuade customers to make an actual purchase. The sales of private vehicles in Thailand are likely to shrink (AEC+ . BUSINESS ADVISORY, 2019)1, which contrasts with the numbers of investments on advertising of private car brands, as there are many factors that influenced the purchase intention of the customer before an actual purchase. purchase, therefore this research aims to investigate the influencing factors that drive purchase intention towards non-luxury private cars of Thai customers.
LITERATURE REVIEW
- Perceived product and service quality
- Price Consciousness – Price sensitivity
- Perceived Value
- Social Status
- Purchase intention and actual purchase behavior
H1: Perceived product and service quality is positively associated with Thai customers' purchase intention towards the non-luxury private car. H3: Perceived Value is positively associated with Thai customers' purchase intention towards the non-luxury private car. H4: Social status is positively associated with Thai customers' purchase intention towards the non-luxury private car.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
- Sample
- Questionnaire design
- Screening Question
- General Question
- Main Question
- Demographic information
- Limitation of survey
The question will guide the respondents to have a better understanding of the context of the survey before paying attention to the main questions. In the last section of the survey, the demographic question was created using nominal scales. The question relates to gender, age, educational background, monthly income and marital status of the respondents.
RESEARCH FINDING & RESULTS
Demographic information
Gender
The main age group in this study is respondents between 25 and 34 years of age, which represent 76%, followed by respondents between and above 45 years of age.
Age Groups
The social status of the respondents is shown in Figure 4.4. Of the 100 usable respondents, the majority of respondents are single (83%), followed by married with child (12%) and married without child (5%).
Marital Status
Descriptive information of car’s respondents
The information from Figure 4.5 shows that the majority of respondents use Honda (52%) and Toyota (35%), while the minority of respondents used other car brands that are Mazda, Nissan, Isuzu, Subaru, Chevrolet, MG, and Suzuki counts only 13.
Currently Owned car Brands
Factors Analysis
In this study, the factor analysis technique was implemented to reduce a large number of variables to the smaller data set to make it more manageable and understandable. The initial question contains 16 questions that represented 4 independent variables which are perceived service and product quality, price awareness, perceived value and social status. Nevertheless, it is necessary to cut some of the variables with factor loading below 0.4 and cut the variables that have cross-loading or the factors that have numbers appearing on more than one component.
Furthermore, before obtaining the final adjusted components, as shown in Table 4.3.2, the misfit significance factors in each component must be eliminated. After subtracting all low factor loading, cross-loading and mismatch significance factors, there were a total of 8 questions left that appeared to be more related and meaningfully a proper measurement of intention to buy. The final component of this research can be separated into 2 components which are perceived Social Status and Perceived Value.
Descriptive Analysis (Gender, Age, Education, income and marital status)
- Gender
- Age groups
- Education background
- Income
- Marital status
- ANOVA table for the Regression model
According to Table 4.3, there are no significant differences in mean values between men and women in relation to all factors involving an intention to buy. For this attribute, the highest mean Perceived product and service quality is represented by "Product quality is very important to me when choosing a car brand" with a mean of 3.60, while the lowest mean score in this attribute is Social Status ( "I worry about others seeing what brand of car I use when I go out") with an average score of only 2.31. I think the car I have offers the highest quality compared to another car brand in the same class.
I think the car I have is the most reliable brand in the same class of cars. According to Table 4.4, one-way ANOVA shows a significant difference between age groups (sig.<0.05) related to one variable which is perceived value (I feel that I am buying a car at a reasonable price) (sig.=0.002 ). As for the average score, we can describe that respondents aged between 35 and 44 perceived a higher value in the aspect "I feel that I am buying a car at a reasonable price" than respondents aged between and over 45.
In addition, there is no significant difference between respondents' education on all factors involving purchase intention. With this attribute, it can be defined that respondents of all educational levels answer in the same direction, which reflects the average grade. For the monthly income attribute, Table 4.6 shows significant differences between the income range related to the three variables which are: Price Consciousness (I would like to buy a cheaper car instead of a luxury car with a higher price.)
According to One-way ANOVA, it indicates that for price consciousness (I would like to buy a cheaper car rather than the luxury car with a higher price.) the monthly income of less than 30,000 baht has much higher mean (mean=3.20) compared to others monthly income range, while the income group of 90,001 baht and above only has the average of 2.15. Additionally, for the Perceived Value variable (I feel that I buy a car at a reasonable price.), it proves the significant difference in the income groups, as higher monthly income groups tend to perceive more value than the lower income groups. From Table 4.7, there is one significant difference between marital status regarding one variable which is Perceived product and service quality (I think the car I have provides the highest quality compared to another brand of car in the same class).
ANOVA a
Regression Analysis
The result in the coefficient matrix provides the information to predict purchase intention based on social status and perceived value. According to Table 4.10, social status and perceived value contribute statistically significantly to the regression model (Sig.=.000). Moreover, based on the standardized coefficients beta, social status (.477) has a higher score than the observed value (.355). It can be described that this is the most underlying factor that influences the intention to purchase.
To put it simply, buyers are more likely to buy a non-luxury passenger car to improve their social status. However, there is no significant difference between the results in the relationship between social status and perceived value.
CONCLUSION
- Conclusion
- Discussion & Finding
- Implication for Business
- Limitation and Recommendation for future research
However, perceived product and service quality and price consciousness were not statistically significant in the regression model. For price consciousness and perceived product and service quality factors, it shows the significant difference in price sensitivity within the different income range of the respondents, from the result, it can be seen that the respondents with the highest range of income tends to be less sensitive to price. Moreover, it proves the significant difference in perception of service perception and product quality between marital status, respondents who are already married with children tend to perceive more about product and service quality than other marital status groups.
According to Kacen et al. (2012) perceived product, service quality and price consciousness are the fundamental factors that drive customers' perceived value. Marketers of non-luxury vehicle companies should design a marketing strategy that focuses on these two aspects, namely social status (buying a car to improve their social status) and enhancing the most valuable product in the customer's perception (perceived value ). . In addition, the result for price consciousness shows that people with higher monthly incomes have less price consciousness, which is imperative for non-luxury vehicle companies to focus on pricing strategy according to the car model to drive intention to purchase a lead.
However, there are some limitations that need to be considered and warrant more research in future study. First, the factors that influenced customers' purchase intention should be investigated in addition to the four variables included in this research. Nevertheless, there are some characteristics related to demographic aspects that should be studied in more detail, such as the difference in the perspective of customers in the second generation.
The recommendation for future research is to collect more variety of sample sizes, to ensure that the sample size of each characteristic is more or less equal, to make it more reliable, and to explore it more deeply on descriptive analysis.
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APPENDICES
This survey is part of research for a consulting internship to fulfill the requirements for the Master of Management degree at the College of Management, Mahidol University. The topic of the study is related to "Factors influencing the purchase intention towards non-luxury private car of Thai customers". You are a person who decides or chooses the car brand you currently have.
Remember when you decide to buy a car, among the following factors, which one suits you the most. After-sales service affects my satisfaction towards the brand, and it increases the likelihood of buying again from the same brand. When choosing the brand of the car, resale value is one of the most important factors I considered.
When you decide to buy a car, let us remind you of the main factors that influence your purchase intention. I decided to buy this brand because of the quality of the products and sales services (pre-sales and after-sales). If the price of a luxury brand car is not too high, I would like to buy it.
