DOI: 10.14457/tu.the.2017.460
title: A study of consumer behavior toward organic skin and personal care products

description: Consumers nowadays have a desire to avoid chemical residues in food products and seek organic products that benefit their health in the long term. Moreover, increasing awareness of environmental issues has also fostered a rise in the usage of environmentally-friendly products. As such, organic skin and personal care products (organic products) are an appropriate option for this segment. Therefore, a research study was conducted with the objective of answering two main questions: “What are the factors that influence consumers to buy organic skin and personal care products?” and “What are the factors that cause a person not to buy or stop buying organic products?” The purpose of this research was to study consumers’ behavior towards organic skin and personal care products as assessed through their attitudes, customer profiles, subjective norm (external factors), internal factors and perceived value from organic products. The research methodology consisted of qualitative and quantitative research. The qualitative part came from two sources including secondary data and individual in-depth interviews with participants. Secondary data was used in order to identify the key variables that affect purchase intentions for skin and personal care products. It also helped to interpret primary data more insightfully. In-depth interviews were conducted with six respondents comprised of two organic product users, two former users of organic products and two non- users. The methodology identified the reasons why some consumers opted for organic products or, contrarily, why other users stopped using or had never used organic products. The survey employed in this research gathered information from 206 respondents that were divided into three groups: the user, former user and non-user. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) program was also used to analyze the data from the survey. The data were collected from 206 respondents who were also separated into users, former users and non-users. From the collected data, the reason why current users were motivated to use organic products the first time was that they believed in the high quality, which had USDA organic certification. However, the main reason why the non-users did not change to use organic products was the these products were difficult to buy. The two major factors that significantly affected the purchasing intention were consumer value and the consumer profile. The two potential segments that should be targeted are the Life Balance user and Trendy Innovator and then try to understand them clearly to create marketing strategies and key messages, which would be communicated to each segment appropriately. The key findings from this study can be used by organic skin products business entrepreneurs in Thailand to better understand consumers’ behavior and initiate effective marketing strategies. This could lead to an increase in the purchasing of products or a transformation from the status of being a non-user or former user to becoming a current one as well as the ability to achieve and remain in the target consumer’s mind.