Examining the Direct and Indirect Role of eWOM in Functional Foods Purchase Intention

Purpose: The demand for functional foods has also increased with increased health awareness, especially in the post-pandemic era. Consumers tend to seek relevant information to assist their purchase decision-making. Electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) is perceived as an innovative source of information as extensive information can be obtained from electronic platforms such as social media. However, the role of the eWOM on functional food purchase intention (PI) is still undiscovered. Therefore, the study's main objective is to investigate the role of eWOM on functional food PI through an extended theory of planned behaviour (TPB) model. Design/methodology/approach: A total of 223 valid responses were gathered in this study and analysed using partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). Findings: To be completed Research limitations/implications: The finding first revealed that attitude (ATT), subjective norm (SN), health consciousness (HC), and eWOM significantly influence functional foods PI. Besides, eWOM also significantly affects ATT, SN, perceived behavioural control (PBC), and HC. In addition, the findings also found that eWOM indirectly significantly influences functional food PI through ATT and SN. Practical implications: This study successfully verified the crucial role of eWOM on functional foods PI, which is theoretically essential as it provides evidence of the role of eWOM on PI. Besides, the practical implications derived from the study's findings are also discussed in this study. Originality/value: The study proposed a novel research framework that provided solid evidence of the effect of eWOM on functional food PI by extending the TPB model. The finding proved that eWOM has a significant direct effect on the constructs in the framework and influenced PI indirectly through ATT and SN. Keywords: electronic word-of-mouth, functional foods, theory of planned behaviour, health consciousness, purchase intention
Introduction Internal and external factors influence consumers' purchase intention (PI) (Sun et al., 2022). Word of mouth (WOM) is perceived as affecting consumers' purchase behaviour (Garcia-Salirrosas & Rondon-Eusebio, 2022; Lin [...]