顧客對價格溢價的社會企業產品購買意向及其機制研究

Abstract

The main purpose of social enterprise is to tackle social problems. By creating a self-sustaining business, these social enterprises can conform the interests of the community and address social problems, and thus maintain the sustainable business models. According to the statistics of the Ministry of the Interior Republic of China (Taiwan) in 2018, there was a growing number of permitted social enterprises were established in Taiwan. However, these entreprises were difficult to survive due to limited resources (Fu, 2019). The present study uses Leezen Company Limited as an example to investigate this issue. Leezen was a “Social Enterprise Star” in 2018 as elected in the “Global Views Monthly Magazine”, which had over 130 physical stores in Taiwan and established branches in six countries. Due to the success of Leezen, its business model is worthy to study. It is also particularly interesting and worthy to investigate how and why this kind of successful social enterprises can substain and grow in the fiercely competitive market.

In practices, customers of social enterprises usually identify with premium price of the products and agree that the level of customer involvement would affect their purchase intention of price premium. In theory, however, no empirical study focuses on examining how and why customers identify with social enterprises’ brand images, and hence their purchase intention of price premium. Therefore, this study adopts a hybrid research method, combining both qualitative interviews and quantitative survey methologies, to explore this issue.

This study analyzed through moderated mediation analysis and examined moderated mediation relationships between altruism, utilitarianism, identification of social enterprise brand image, purchase intention of price premium, and customer involvement. Our results show that for customers their altruistic emotions are negatively correlated with identification of social enterprise brand image, and thereby positively correlated with purchase intention of price premium. In addition, results reveal that customer involvement positively moderates the effect of identification of social enterprise brand image on purchase intention of price premium. In comparison, customers’ utilitarianism is positively correlated with identification of social enterprise brand image, and thereby positively correlated with purchase intention of price premium. In summary, customers belong to different income groups have different demands for altruistic emotions and utilitarianism. Increasing the level of customer involvement is helpful to strengthen the relationship between identification of social enterprise brand image and purchase intention of price premium. When customers are willing to continue to purchase the products or services of social enterprises, these social enterprises can operate sustainably and succesfully.

Date of Award	6 May 2020
Original language	Chinese (Traditional)
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Ziguang CHEN (Supervisor) & Qingyun Jiang (External Supervisor)