The Influence of Perceived Prior Experience, Attitude and Subjective Norms toward Consumers’ Online Purchase Intention of Cosmetics Products

Abstract

This study attempts to investigate whether perceived prior experience, attitude and subjective norms factors have influence on consumers’ online purchase intention of cosmetics products. To achieve the objectives, 120 willing Malaysian consumers with past experience of purchasing cosmetics through online platform were invited to participate in a survey starting end of October until early December 2019. The relationships between factors were analysed using the structural equation modelling (SEM-PLS) version 2.0. Results show that perceived prior experience was positively related to attitude. In addition, attitude and subjective norms were shown to relate positively with consumers’ online purchase intention. For cosmetic product e-retailers, the findings imply that they should focus on consumers with positive attitude as such attitude would affect their online purchase intention of cosmetics. The e-retailers should also focus on making sure that consumers have positive prior experience of the e-commerce platform used as this would have a direct positive impact on the consumers’ attitude toward online purchase intention. Besides that, subjective norms were also found to play important role to predict consumers’ online purchase intention toward cosmetics. This study contributes valuable insights to e-commerce industry, particularly the e-retailers, scholars, policy makers and firms on the role of consumers’ attitude towards online purchase intention for cosmetic products in Malaysia.