The Influence of Green Marketing on Consumer Purchasing Behaviour among Millennials Group in Klang Valley, Malaysia

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Introduction
Over the last couple of decades, environmental concerns such as global warming, climate change, pollution, and resource depletion have raised awareness among businesses and consumers (Govender & Govender, 2016).Due to this concern, businesses' and consumers' habits have started to change.Businesses started to utilize green marketing as a marketing tool and have become more prevalent in response to growing of environmental concerns (FuiYeng & Yazdanifard, 2015).According to Fernando (2020), green marketing refers to the practices of establishing and advertising products based on their real or identified environmental sustainability.Green marketing emphasizes the green effort that a business is making such as the use of recyclable materials and cutting energy consumption for producing the products (Song-Turner & Polonsky, 2016).This green practice is then applied to their marketing strategies to influence consumers' purchasing behaviour.The green marketing effort is not just a way to attract consumers; it is becoming a requirement for businesses to care more about the environment (Townsend, 2017).This green marketing strategy has become more appealing to buyers nowadays who are now known as green consumers; the consumers who are concerned not just about the environment but also about how ethically the product is made (Ricci, 2018).As a developing country, the government of Malaysia implemented a policy and commitment to embrace the sustainability agenda (Hassan & Ali, 2015).Malaysian seventh prime minister, Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad during the 25th ASEAN Labour Ministers Meeting again stressed that Malaysia will put into focus on promoting green products not just in Malaysia but also in ASEAN countries as well (Manimaharan, 2019).An empirical study regarding green buying behaviour and attitudes of different populations found that in developing nations, green marketing is gaining prominence (Khare, 2015).The study concluded that, as a result of green marketing consumers' awareness and knowledge increased towards the elements of eco-labelling, green branding, and green advertising.These matters are also driven by consumers' concern towards the environment's deterioration and benevolent values thus making consumers more socially integrated and favourable attitude towards green products (Jaju, 2016).Hence, the environmental issue is fast turning into crucial business issues in Malaysia (Ahmed et al., 2017).Since green marketing acceptations, specifically in developing countries have shown an increasing trend, this study is conducted with the intention to examine the influence of green marketing towards consumer purchasing behaviour.Specifically, this study will focus on the relationship between Eco-labelling, Green Branding and Packaging, Green Advertising and Green Pricing with Consumer Purchasing Behaviour among the millennial group in Klang Valley, Malaysia.

Literature Review and Hypotheses Eco-Labelling
Eco-labelling is one of the major tools in green marketing.Ecolabels are intended as a factor influencing the consumers that will decrease ecological impact and allow them to affect how products are made.Consumers' purchase decision of green products mostly relies on their environmental awareness, attitude, price alertness, and situational characteristics such as eco-labelling and advertisements on green products (Tan et al., 2019).For the consumer who is considering on environmental aspects of the product that they are going to purchase, ecolabel will be one of the main factors that will push them to make their purchase decision (Sugandini et al., 2020).Based on research by Jeevandas et al (2019), people who believe in ecolabelling are not the ones who prefer to buy green products.Environmental marketing and product labelling influence Millennials to purchase eco-friendly products (Dolan et al. 2015).The combined effect can also be interpreted in a sense that eco-labelling is attractive for green products, as it means there is sufficient information on the label, which is easy to read, is linked to lifestyle style and provides an accurate level of information (Shabbir et al., 2020).Researchers explained that eco-labelling is an important factor that will influences the purchasing patterns of consumers' behaviours (Shabbir et al., 2020).Thus, the following hypothesis was proposed Hypothesis 1: There is a positive relationship between eco-labelling and consumer purchasing behaviour.

Green Branding and Packaging
It is difficult to change consumption behaviours especially when self-service retailing food services has been used widely nowadays, which leads to an increase in packaging waste.However, the government's initiative of not using non-recyclable packaging in daily business activities really encourages consumers to adopt environmental-friendly behaviour.The charges on non-recyclable packages also reinforce the norm and encourage others that are reluctant to accept the norm previously.
Green branding and packaging always give a positive perception towards the company that emphasizes eco-friendly packaging.Companies are encouraged to include environmental policy in their business and marketing plan (Sugandini et al., 2020).Millennials made their purchase based on loyalty to the brands, besides the enjoyment of purchasing (Naderi & Steenburg, 2018).The brand's sales record with good comments is one of the main factors that could determine the brand's reputation.And good reputation could influence future purchases by consumers (Muda et al., 2015).Consumers are more willing to purchase products from a brand with a strong environmental commitment (Dolan et al., 2015).If a company can distinguish itself as a reputable green brand while maintaining superior quality and a strong image, it will be able to successfully appeal to green consumers and the Millennials Generation (Dolan et al., 2015).Thus, the following hypothesis was proposed: Hypothesis 2: There is a positive relationship between green branding and packaging and consumer purchasing behaviour.

Green Advertising
Green advertising or green marketing gives a perception of an organization's interest in the environment (Mahmoud et al., 2017).As one of the marketing strategies, it is part of the management process to identify, anticipate and meet customer demand.Green marketing includes promotional activities which promote green products' relationship with the environment and green lifestyles.An effective marketing will focus on two (2) major objectives which are to provide information about a product and to persuade customers to buy the product (Sugandini et al., 2018).
Green advertising is more related to the tools of promotion which involves marketing materials, papers, signage, websites, on-site promotions, presentation and many more.The main objective is to influence their purchase behaviour to buy eco-friendly products which will not harm the environment and themselves.Green products become familiar to prospective customers through development in green marketing.It reaches customers through mediums such as journals, news, television etc.Consumers purchase the products after getting knowledge about it via marketing and advertisement (Jeevandas et al., 2019).Green marketing and advertisement play a big role in creating awareness of green products.Marketers of green products use self-directed targeting strategies in promoting green products to millennials which is more efficient (Naderi & Steenburg, 2018).Thus, the following hypothesis was proposed Hypothesis 3: There is a positive relationship between green advertising and consumer purchasing behaviour.

Green Pricing
Price is the top critical fundamentals in marketing mix.Studies showed that price is the main barrier to the adoption of green products (Tan et al., 2019).Environmental benefits in a product are an added value but will often be deciding factor between other products with equal value and quality.The initial cost for green products is higher due to the lack of ecofriendly sources in the market, compared to non-eco-friendly sources.This reason leads to the company's decision on the pricing for green products.Green pricing usually discourages consumers' green purchasing decisions (Bathmanatha & Rajadurai, 2019).Green pricing considers people, the planet, and profit.In that way, it is looking after the health of employees, and communities and ensures efficient productivity.
However, due to this normality, consumers starting to accept that green products are often to be at premium prices.Thus, green consumers are willing to pay extra for their chosen products.Their loyalty does not consider the price at all but choose to live with an environmental-friendly alternative (Mahmoud, 2018).Consumers' purchase decision is more likely to diverge depending on their thought about the products (Tan et al., 2019).Thus, consumer's decision on paying higher prices for green products is related to awareness of value instead the actual price of the products (Moser, 2015).Almost three-out-of-four millennial respondents are willing to pay extra for a brand committed to eco-friendly and positive environmental impact as personal values outweigh the cost and convenience (Naderi & Steenburg, 2018).Thus, the following hypothesis was proposed Hypothesis 4: There is a positive relationship between green pricing and consumer purchasing behaviour.

Methodology
The participants are from different gender, ethnicity, educational qualification and income group.This is due to the research explaining that there was a link between buying behaviour of consumers towards green marketing.The frame is determined based on the population in Klang Valley of which taking 70% of 8,327 million is the mid-age of approximately 5,828 million.We are taking in 60% of the mid-age is millennials group which estimated around 3,500 million in Klang Valley.
Descriptive analysis is used in this research in analysing the consumer purchasing behaviours and decision making.It is used to see the social pattern of respondent and which category of respondent likely to be the main concern.(Loeb, et al., 2017).In order to measure the coefficient of determination as well as the regression comparison using independent variables it is called regression analysis (Rawlings et al., 1998).This research is done using linear regression analysis in environmental behaviour, environmental beliefs, and the different factors as well as the socio-demographics.The socio-demographics are the controlled variables, whereas the different factors of environmental beliefs with environmental behaviour as the dependent variable are not the controlled variables.A bivariate correlation analysis is used for all the factors of environmental beliefs and environmental behaviour to measure the relationship between the independent and dependent variables.

Results and Discussions
The research was conducted towards 300 respondents in Klang Valley that were born during the year of 1981 to 1996 or widely known as Millennials generation.The demographic of respondent consists of both gender, diverse ethnics, different education background, and income group are shown in Table 1.From the analysis, eco-labelling has strong positive correlation and shows significant relationship on consumer purchasing behaviour.The correlation is supported by previous research by Tan, et al (2019) consumer's' purchase decisions of green products subject to their environmental awareness, attitude, price-sensitivity, situational attributes such as ecolabelling and advertisements on green products.Eco-labels are intended as a factor influencing the consumers that will decrease ecological impact and allow them to affect how products are made.According to Sugandini et al (2020), for consumer who is considered on environmental characteristics of the product that they are going to purchase, eco-label will be one of the main factors that will urge them to decide their purchase decision.
Environmental marketing and product labelling influence Millennials to purchase eco-friendly products (Dolan et al., 2015).Thus, hypothesis (H1) where positive relationship between ecolabelling and consumer purchasing behaviour is supported.The analysis of relationship between green branding and packaging, and consumer purchasing behaviour shows nearly perfect positive correlation and has significant relationship.Respondents tend to associate their attitude towards packaging in general, about the negative environmental effects.The result is likely supported by research by Sugandini et al (2020) where consumers emphasize the functional characteristic of the package.The brand's sale records with good comments are one of the main factors that could determine the brand's reputation.And good reputation could influence future purchases by consumer (Muda et al., 2015).Millennials made their purchase based on loyalty to the brands, besides the enjoyment of purchasing (Naderi & Steenburg, 2018).Thus, prove Hypothesis (H2) on the positive relationship between green branding and packaging towards consumer purchasing behaviour.Green advertising also shows strong positive correlation and has significant relationship on consumer purchasing behaviour.The result is supported by a study by Mahmoud (2018) where green advertising or green marketing gives a perception to an organization's interest in environment.Green advertising is a communication tools to represent the brand's identity and their value, which eventually will develop the brand's reputation.Advertisement is one of the ways to identify customer's needs.Consumers purchase the products after getting knowledge on it via marketing and advertisement (Jeevandas et al., 2019).Prospective consumers become familiar with green products via advertisement.Thus, the finding is supporting hypothesis (H3) where green advertising has positive relationship with consumers purchasing behaviour.
Green pricing shows strong positive correlation and has significant relationship on consumer purchasing behaviour.According to Bathmanatha & Rajadurai (2019), green pricing considers people, planet and profit.In that way it is looking after the health of employees, communities and ensures efficient productivity.The normality of green product often to be in premium price is accepted in community nowadays.Their loyalty does not consider on the price at all but choose to live with environmental-friendly alternative (Mahmoud, 2018).Price is no more a boundary to green purchasing behaviour if the green product attributions are appreciated and consumers agree to spend a premium price (Moser, 2015).Thus, hypothesis (H4) which claimed that there is a positive relationship between green pricing and consumer purchasing behaviour is proven.
The research has been conducted to identify what are the driven factors resulted to consumer purchasing behaviour.It has proven that 67.8% of customer purchasing behaviour affected by all independent variable's factors.All independent variable factors have significant relationship with the consumer purchasing behaviour except demographic factor.Green branding and packaging have the biggest impact on consumer purchasing behaviour compared to other environmental belief factors.While eco-labelling has the least impact on the consumer purchasing behaviour.Environmental belief factors are affecting their purchasing decisions which also lead to their environmental behaviour.According to Moser (2015), green consumers are aware that their purchasing behaviour can make a difference in the world.According to the results and findings analysis, independent variables are affecting environmental behaviour, and it is also giving a significant change to environmental behaviour.Thus, research question on the correlation between the environmental belief factors including eco-labelling, green branding and packaging, environmental advertisement and green pricing towards consumer purchasing behaviour is answered.

Conclusion
This study was carried out to fill in any gaps in the literature about the influence of various green marketing methods on customer buying behaviour.This study aims to investigate how green marketing affects millennial customers' purchasing behaviours and decision-making.
The overall goal of the study has a sub-objective that aids in determining the direction and strength of the relationship between four different environmental belief elements and environmental behaviours while keeping an eye on important socio-demographic variables.
Other sub-objectives include investigating environmental behaviour, the significant relationship between four environmental belief factors and key sociodemographic variables: which including (gender, ethnicity, education level, and income group) and analysing the correlation between environmental belief factors (eco-labels, green brands and packaging, environmental advertising, green pricing) and consumer environmental behaviour.
The first major finding was the lack of a substantial correlation between sociodemographic factors and consumer purchasing behaviour.For instance, research results indicate that there is no appreciable gender difference.There isn't a clear explanation for why women dominated the survey.According to the findings, women are more likely than men to purchase green items.The second finding is that consumers value eco-labelling and that it significantly and directly influences their green behaviour, which then influences their purchasing behaviour.
A clear relationship between brand and consumer behaviour as well as an expansion of the green buying model has been demonstrated thanks to the power of green branding and packaging on consumers' environmental behaviours.And the research shows that individuals are more prone to trust well-known companies.A considerable positive association between green advertising and green consumer behaviour was discovered in terms of correlation.The important discovery is also that consumers' perceptions of green items and high-quality green pricing have a favourable effect on consumers' behaviour and consequently influence their purchase decisions.
Overall, the findings of this study provide valuable insights for companies looking to develop effective green marketing strategies and for policymakers aiming to promote sustainable consumption patterns.By understanding the factors that influence consumer behavior when it comes to green products, companies can better target their marketing efforts and develop products that meet consumer preferences.Policymakers can also use these findings to develop policies that encourage sustainable consumption patterns and promote the adoption of green products.

Table 1
Demographic table of respondents

Table 3
Principal Axis Factor based on varimax rotation and communalities extraction of questionnaire items.

Table 7
Normality test on variables without socio-demographic factoring based onShapiro-Wilk.