A Study on the Purchase Intention of Agricultural Products by Chinese Consumers in Zhejiang Province on a Live Sales Platform

Abstract

The purpose of this paper was to explore the attitudes relating to the consumer purchase intentions of live streaming sales and to know the influences on consumers’ final purchase decisions for farming products through live streaming. A quantitative online survey was used to examine consumer purchase intentions for live streaming sales to understand more about their thoughts and behavior regarding agricultural products. The study collected 208 online customer surveys from Chinese nationals, performing a non-probability purposive sampling technique to validate the analysis. The sample size of 208 was calculated based on G*Power. The results show that attitude homophily and influencer professionality in relation to the influencers, impacts the purchase intentions of consumers, suggesting that the consumer decision path involves both affective and internalization processes before the consumer makes a decision to purchase the product. Perceived uncertainty was shown to be a marginal effect whereby consumers are slightly concerned about the quality and price of purchases through live stream shopping. These findings confirm the theory of planned behavior (TPB) by revealing that consumers’ purchase intentions come from their own decision making. Additionally, the study extends the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) by proving that attitude homophily and professionality have a high effect on purchase intentions for live sales. It was found that attitude homophily and professionality are key factors to increase consumers’ trust in products. Therefore, it is suggested that businesses using live stream sales should pay more attention to enhance relatedness for current and potential consumers.