What is a Population and Sampling Technique Used in Intention towards Online Halal Cosmetic Purchasing Research?

To answer research questions, it is questionable whether researchers should be able to collect data from all cases. It is necessary to choose a representative sample and wise sampling technique. The researchers need to understand population and to choose the correct sampling method for the study. Therefore, this article describes the population and sampling technique used in intention towards online halal cosmetic research. In this context, two stages sampling technique are also introduced.


Introduction
Intention to purchase is the desire to purchase within a given term of time a particular product or service (Hair et al., 2011). In the sense of marketing, the intention of the purchased products is an integral part of the intention of consumers (Blackwel et al., 2001;Altuna and Konuk, 2009;Chew and Adis, 2018). The consumer's willingness to buy from an e-commerce company (Salisbury et al., 2001;Choon et al., 2010) has consequences in purchasing intention online. Consumers are more likely to visit an online site with the intention of buying if they are familiar and has knowledge with e-commerce businesses (Forsythe and Shi, 2003;Gefen and Straub, 2004). Knowledge of e-commerce means that consumers can understand what is happening and why and what will happen next (Gefen, 2000;Gefen and Straub, 2004). Purchase intentions in an online environment can differ greatly from traditional sales channels like physical stores (Escobar-Rodrguez and Bonsón-Fernández, 2017). Intention to purchase is broadly considered to be the most important factors of behaviour (i.e., actual purchase). As a result, it's critical to comprehend consumers' e-commerce purchase intentions.
Companies must meet consumer demand to improve purchasing intentions (Fortsythe and Shi, 2003). Organizations must comply with consumer requirements and standards. A significant predictor of actual shopping is the desire to shop online (Pavlou, 2003;Kim and Lennon, 2008). To reach the actual purchase target, it is imperative to study intention to buy online (Lee and Lee, 2015). Customers' real purchase behaviour is dichotomous because customers do or not have to purchase the product (Li et al. 2020). Because purchasing decisions can only be made based on actual sales numbers, investigating consumer intentions is seen as a reasonable technique to learn about customers' attitudes and feelings about a possible purchase (Moghavvemi et al., 2015). Therefore, intention can be a reliable predictor of actual behavior (Montano and Kasprzyk, 2015;Vizano et al., 2021). Besides, past studies have treated intention as a key factor in deciding a customer acceptance of a technology (Adapa and Roy, 2017). Intention signals a customer's foreseeable behaviour in the future associated with consuming a product (Suhartanto et al., 2018). In regards of purchasing halal products, consumers choose to buy a product or service because they believe they need it, or because they have a positive attitude about the product and appreciate it. To put it another way, buying means that when a thing has been examined and determined to be worthwhile, the buyer has intention to buy (Jaafar et al. 2015). As a result, consumer intention to purchase of halal items are motivated by a desire to purchase specific halal products available on the market. However, halal cosmetic users and respondent are undoubtedly questionable (Fauzy, 2019) specifically for online halal cosmetic seller (Azharee, 2020). Thus, there is a need to select a representative sample and present a sampling technique for online halal cosmetic purchasing intention since it is one of the most important factors which determines the accuracy of research result (Singh, 2018). Describing populations and clearly describing sampling technique provides needed scaffolding to researchers. Therefore, this study aims to define the population and sampling technique used in intention towards online halal cosmetic purchasing study.

The Target Population
As indicated by Sekaran and Bougie (2016), a population is recognized as the whole gathering of individuals, occasions or things of premium that the analyst needs to explore or determined by the objectives of the examination (Burn et al., 2017). As for the intention towards online halal cosmetic purchasing, Muslim has been chosen since Muslim represent the largest religion in Malaysia, with an estimated 66.2 percent of total population (Pew Research, 2020). The target population was picked among Muslim Consumer who lives in Malaysia Central Region. The researcher chooses Malaysia Central Region since it represents the highest household income despite good internet penetration (Department of Statistics Malaysia, 2021). Figure 1 shows the Malaysia Central Region territories are Selangor, Wilayah Persekutuan Kuala Lumpur and Wilayah Persekutuan Putrajaya.

Figure 1. Malaysia Central Region
In addition, the research object population includes Muslim shoppers who have experience shopping for halal cosmetic products via website. Despite incorporating Muslim shoppers from all age groups, the statistics released by EcInsider (2019) have focused on general customers that range young customers from the age of 18 to 24 years old, and 25 -34 years old as well as 35 to 44 years old, 45 -54 and 56 to 64 years old. Thus, coupled with the fact that customers in the age of 18 and above can have steady income and able to decide on their purchase (Euromonitor International, 2011), it would be appropriate for this research to consider Muslim consumer in Central part of Malaysia aged 18 years old and older as sample. Therefore, the criteria for contributing to the study were Muslim above 18 years old living in Malaysia Central Region who have experience in purchasing halal cosmetic product from website.

Sampling Technique
As cited by Awang (2015); Awang et al (2018), if the researcher utilized Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) for analysis, it is suggested analyst to get respondents utilizing the probability sampling technique in order to meet the requirement for parametric statistical analysis. Probability sampling has the advantage that any bias that may exist in the population should have been equally distributed among the selected respondents (Creswell, 2014). He added probability sampling is the most rigorous form of sampling in quantitative research. In fact, many past scholars make the strongest claims that the sample is representative of the population (Creswell, 2014;Sekaran and Bougie, 2016) and are likely to generalize the results (Hair et al., 2018).
The sampling technique suggested to adopted a two-stage sampling technique which included convenience sampling (first stage-sampling frame development) and simple random sampling (second stage). Convenience sampling refers to a type of nonprobability or nonrandom sampling where members of the target population that meet certain practical criteria, such as easy accessibility, geographical proximity, availability at a given time, or the willingness to participate are included for the purpose of the study (Etikan et al., 2016). As for the first stage, the researcher needs to developed the sampling frame for the target population since the sampling frame for Muslim in central region of Malaysia is not accessible and not available. The first stage of sampling technique used convenience sampling. Then, the data are pooled to form a random sample (probability sampling) for second stage of sampling.

Conclusion
This article provides a clear definition of the population structures that are critical for intention towards online halal cosmetic purchasing research, and begins with an analytical unit that exemplifies how these structures are described in the study. The article are beneficial and provides scholars and students with a model for developing relevant population and sample descriptions in their studies and other research. Future research may focus on other important areas of social science research, including data collection techniques and overall research methodology alignment.