Exploring Consumer Intention and Perceptions towards Purchasing Local Milk Powder

Disputable information recently released through the mass media related to the imported milk powder has made a negative influence on powdered milk consumption in Sri Lanka. Conversely, this disputable information has been able to make high demand for local milk powder products. Therefore, this study was mainly focused to evaluate how the attitude towards the product, perceived knowledge, trust, price, availability, health consciousness, and subjective norms influence the local milk powder purchase intention of consumers. Primary data were collected through a questionnaire-based survey employing a face-to-face interview from a sample of 250 respondents covering five Divisional Secretariats in the Kegalle District. Data were analyzed by using Confirmatory Factor Analysis through Analysis of Moment Structure (AMOS). ______________________________________ Faculty of Agriculture and Plantation Management, Wayamba University of Sri Lanka, Makandura, Gonawilla (NWP), Sri Lanka. *kusum_wijesinghe06@yahoo.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0431-9823 This article is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided the original author and source are credited. The results revealed that trust, health consciousness, availability and price are the main factors that influence the local milk powder purchase intention of the consumers. The results also show that the lack of availability is the major issue in the local milk powder industry. Hence, the findings of the case of Kegalle District, are important to policymakers, producers, vendors, and the government to implement better strategies for the development of the local milk powder industry in Sri Lanka.


INTRODUCTION
Lanka. Purchase intention is viewed as the motivation of a person to attempt to buy a product of a particular brand (Hoang et al., 2017). Researchers have mentioned that country image and brand image are supposed to have direct impacts on purchase intention (Anon, 2013;Cordell, 1993;Hoang et al., 2017;Tse and Gorn, 1993;Parkvithee and Miranda, 2012). Further, researchers have mentioned that consumer knowledge is also a factor that influences the purchase intention of a product (Alba and Hutchinson, 1987). In a recent study, it has been pointed out that consumers' product knowledge has a significant effect on the purchase intention of a product (Cakici and Shukla, 2017).
According to past studies, the subjective norm is another factor that influences on purchase intention of consumers for a product (Ortega et al., 2014;Teng and Wang, 2015;Tonsor and Wolf, 2012 Kuma et al., 2012;Bingham et al., 2014).
The literature also highlighted that consumers' attitude towards a product is a function of consumers' evaluations of the attributes possessed with that product (Hysen et al., 2008;Howard, 1989;Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975). A better attitude towards a product makes more preference to buy that product (Lee and Lee, 2009;Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980).
Trust towards a product is another important factor in purchase intention. When consumers trust a product, it reduces uncertainty and enhances purchase intention (Hart and Saunders, 1997). Another research has mentioned that consumers evaluate the quality of a milk product and assure trust prior to purchase (Lakmali and Abeynayake, 2016). Another most important factor for purchase intention is the knowledge of a product.
Consumer knowledge is considered as a kind of product-related experience that influences purchase intention (Alba and Hutchinson, 1987). In a recent study, Cakici and Shukla (2017), has pointed out that consumers' product knowledge has a significant effect on purchase intention.
Product availability influences the purchase intention for a given product. Kumar and Babu (2014)

Conceptual Framework
Based on the literature, the conceptual framework was proposed and it is illustrated in Figure 1 explaining the selected variables. Accordingly, the following hypotheses were depicted for this research.

Data Collection
Data were collected from 250 people who consume local milk powder by using a structured questionnaire.

Measures
The questionnaire consisted of I believe that the delivery process of raw milk is safe T3 I believe that local milk powder product processing is safe Availability AV1 Poor availability of local brands creates a barrier to purchase.

AV2
Seek to purchase local milk powder products anyhow.

AV3
If local milk powder is not available, I buy local branded liquid milk.

AV4
If local milk powder is not available, I buy local fresh milk

AV5
If local milk powder is not available, I do not use milk.

Data Analysis
The

Descriptive Statistics of the Sample
The majority of the respondents were women (54%) and 46% were men in the studied sample.  (Table 2).

Consumer Buying Behaviour
The result revealed that 48.4% of respondents purchase only local milk powder while the majority of people consume both imported and local milk powder (51.6%) as there is a shortage of local milk powder in the market.

Consumer Brand Preference
Consumers mainly focus on two popular local milk brands in the market. In the study sample, 41.6% of the respondents are brand loyal while the majority of the respondents (58.4%) do not consider the brand name when purchasing local milk powder in the market.

Sampling Adequacy
Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) and Bartlett's Test of sphericity (BTS) were conducted to verify the factorability of data. The recommended threshold value for KMO is at least 0.60 and BTS must be significant at P < 0.1. The results for both of the tests were found to meet the minimum requirements (Table 3).

Consistency of Constructs
The Cronbach's Alpha coefficient is a useful indicator to test the internal consistency of the items that make up a construct. When Cronbach's Alpha is    analysis as indicated in Table 6.
According to Table 6, trust, availability and health consciousness significantly and positively enhance consumers' local milk powder purchase intention.
Under the trust, four items were included which asked about 'safeness of local milk powder process', 'safeness of raw milk transportation process',

CONCLUSION
The findings of this study reveal that