Abstract:
The basic premise of the Theory of Planned Behavior suggests that
the purchase intention predicts the purchase behavior. However,
preliminary survey results revealed that this common association
cannot be observed directly since some of the participants who
had higher intention to purchase herbal and ayurvedic beauty care
products (HABCPs) barely purchased the products. Therefore,
what happened in between purchase intention and actual
purchase behavior relationship of HABCPs is unclear. Thus, the
purpose of this study is to test the effect of trust in the relationship
between purchase intention and actual purchase behavior of
HABCP. Employing survey strategy and questionnaire method,
data were collected from 265 female students of the Faculty of
Management Studies of the Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka
in two-time lags. The data were analyzed by using Hayes’ SPSS
Macro Process model. The final fitted model indicates a significant
positive impact of purchase intention on actual purchase behavior
of HABCPs and significant moderation effect of trust on purchase
intention and actual purchase behavior towards HABCPs. Thus,
this study provides a vital implication to use TPB in similar future
studies. Practically, to increase sales of HABCPs, the managers in
the industry should come up with interventions to enhance both
the consumers’ purchase intention towards HABCPs and trust on
HABCPs.
