Attributes that influence consumer’s willingness to pay for fruit leather-based footwear within Nairobi County

Date
2024
Authors
Wangere, M. A.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Strathmore University
Abstract
Green marketing as a promotion tool for products or services emphasizes on environmental and sustainability benefits while meeting consumer demand with eco-friendly and socially responsible options. However, in a fast-changing world where every aspect of life is coming under increased scrutiny - the food that we eat, the clothes we choose to wear, the energy consumption, the way we think about leather and how we promote it needs to take account of these changes. Fruit leather is classified as a new product in the market. Hence, it is important to understand consumer preferences regarding fruit leather attributes, enabling producers to design a market-acceptable product. The research analyzed characteristics that shape consumer’s willingness to pay for fruit leather-based footwear. The attributes that were studied in this research included social-economic (age, income level and education level), functional (material type and lifespan), marketing (price, and eco-label) and psychological (pro- environmental behaviors-self green-identity, reduce, reuse, and recycle). The main research question was: Which attributes influence consumer’s willingness to pay for fruit leather-based footwear in Nairobi County, Kenya? Data was collected using a survey that was distributed to different customers with preference to leather based footwear in Nairobi County. The survey consisted of 3 parts; 1) questions regarding socio-demographic; 2) questions regarding consumer’s pro- environmental behavior; and 3) questions of choice based conjoint experiment. The survey consisted of eight choice-based questions with two alternatives provided for each question. Thus, binary logistic regression was used for the analysis. The response rate for the study was 91.2% representing 456 of the 500. Respondents between the age of 18 years to 60 years were selected as they were exiting from Citywalk Shops-Central Business District (Starehe constituency), Bata shops- Westlands Sarit center mall (Westlands constituency), and footwear shops-Krikor market (Starehe constituency). The study findings indicated that in order of significance, social-economic attributes illustrated the highest influence on consumers' inclination to pay for fruit leather-based footwear which it accounted for 45.2% variability in consumers' readiness to pay for fruit leather-based footwear – gender was the most influential attribute among other social-economic attributes, followed in second place by psychological attributes accounting for 22.5% variability in consumer’s willingness to pay for fruit leather-based footwear – self green-identity was the most influential attribute among other psychological attributes. In third place marketing attributes accounting for 19.3% - ecolabels was the most influential attribute as a marketing attribute- followed and from a distance in fourth place was functional attributes accounting for 1.4% variability in consumer’s willingness to pay for fruit leather-based footwear- material type was the most influential attribute in the functional attributes category. The study established from the binary logistic regression, that the attributes considered significantly contributed to the consumer’s willingness to pay for fruit leather-based footwear – given that the value of R squared was 94.1% an indication that, 94.1% variation in the consumer’s willingness to pay (dependent variable) was attributed to the attributes (independent variables). Thus, proper consideration of the attributes considered in this study during product design would result in an improvement in the consumer’s willingness to pay for fruit leather-based footwear. Key words: Green marketing, Willingness to pay, Social economic, Psychological, Pro-environmental behavior, Self-green identity, Ecolabels, Functional attributes
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Full - text thesis
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Citation
Wangere, M. A. (2024). Attributes that influence consumer’s willingness to pay for fruit leather-based footwear within Nairobi County [Strathmore University]. http://hdl.handle.net/11071/15520