Influence of perceived risk and brand equity on purchasing intention in the Colombian soluble coffee category

Abstract

Different authors have defined purchase intention when a person makes a statement as to whether to buy, or not a product. It has been considered an important indicator in marketing management to project sales of new and existing products (Armstrong, Morwitz, & Kumar, 2000; Huy & Ottar, 2012). The purpose of the research was to identify how using all the set of variables of brand equity and perceived risk could influence purchase intention within soluble coffee consumers in Colombia, using attitude as a mediating variable. The city selected for this research was Bogotá D.C., and the category selected was soluble coffee. The sample size was 927 people and the sample error was 3.2% with 99% level of confidence. The research type was probabilistic, and it used a proportional stratified sample. In order to answer the research proposed questions, three steps were carried out, (a) exploratory factor analysis, (b) confirmatory factor analysis and, (c) structural equations model where seven hypotheses were tested. The initial model considered six latent variables on perceived risk and brand equity each; however, the final model included five variables on brand equity and four on perceived risk. The results obtained, confirmed the influence of attitude as a mediating variable between brand equity and perceived risk on purchase intention within consumers of soluble coffee in the city of Bogotá D. C. Purchase intention was explained by the direct effect of attitude variable and the indirect effects of perceived risk and brand equity. In addition, it also explained the indirect effects that perceived risk has on attitude through brand equity. The variables of brand equity and perceived risk used in the model show that, the effect is much greater when they are included, as joint independent variables. The model also was able to test the significance and positive influence of attitude as a mediating variable between perceived risk and brand equity, on purchase intention. The results obtained from this research showed a very good consistency between each variable and their corresponding items used for each.