Purchase intention and actual purchase behavior of halal bakery products among consumers in Petaling district Selangor / Nurzulain Zulkifli

The emerging bakery industry in Malaysia has shown that the bakery industry has
great potential to further develop and grow, especially in terms of product
development and services offered. However, due to this advances and development,
the halal issue regarding these bakery products has raised the concern among the
consumers. The issue of the halal status usually related to the bakery products is the
origin of the ingredients used in the production. To be specific, when doubt about the
ingredients arises, the buying decision of the consumers is affected. The acceptance,
awareness and readiness of the consumers in Malaysia have shown a good evidence
in terms of how the purchase of halal products is greatly influenced by the halal
concept. Hence, this research is undertaken to investigate the application of Theory of
Planned Behaviour in examining consumer purchase intention and actual purchase
behaviour and the interrelationship between them in the context of halal bakery
products among consumers in the Petaling district, Selangor. In addition to that, in
this study, the halal certification acts as the moderator which affects Theory of
Planned Behaviour, while Purchase Intention represents the mediation effect of this
study. Furthermore, the most influential factor which influences the purchase intention
towards halal bakery products is determined at the end of this study. 500 validated
questionnaires using a four-point Likert scale were distributed to the target purchasers
of bakery products at selected bakery outlets in the Petaling district, Selangor. A
purposive sampling, was opted in this study since the focus of this study is only on
the consumers who purchase bakery products in the respective areas of the Petaling
district. Out of the 500 distributed questionnaires, 476 questionnaires could be used
and were subjected to data analysis using the SPSS software version 24 for assessing
the demographic profile of the respondents. For further analysis, the Partial Least
Square method (i.e. PLS-SEM) was performed to analyze the measurement and
structural models of this study. The results indicate that perceived behavioral control
represents the most influential factor which predicted the consumers’ intention and
actual purchase behavior in purchasing halal bakery products with (þ^ = 0.388) and (þ^
= 0.355), respectively. However, attitude was found to have a non-significant
relationship with the actual purchase behavior þ^ = 0.042. Apart from that, the
moderating effect indicates that both models show that there is a negative significant
effect towards Purchase Intention, since the effect of the moderating effect has been
found to be relatively small (Range f²: .014 to .018) and (f²: .027). The findings of this
study can be beneficial to the food manufacturers and producers, as well as the
Malaysian government bodies in developing effective strategies in order to maximize
the consumer purchase behavior, especially for halal bakery products.