Impact of green marketing mix on purchase intention

Article history: Received 10 May 2017 Received in revised form 10 December 2017 Accepted 20 December 2017 Green marketing concept emerged as a result of organizations' interest in environment. These originations realized that their survival and continuity lies in the coordination between its interest and the benefits of consumer and society. Green marketing includes a broad range of activities such as product modification, change in the production process, modification in advertising, and change in packaging. This paper aims to at investigating the influence of applying green marketing mix elements (product, pricing, distribution and promotion) in Sudan on purchase intention, The design of this research is descriptive and quantitative in nature. The target population for the study is the postgraduate (MBA) listing all universities in Khartoum state that offered graduate level courses were used as the sampling frame. A total of 417 questionnaires were distributed and 341 questionnaires were returned. Statistical analysis revealed that there is significant relationship between green marketing mix elements and consumer’s purchase intention. Future research can investigate relationships identified in this work, as well as test out mediating and moderating relationships. This study will provide better information as input to government policy makers, who responsible for business development, to encourage the manufacturing farm’s use of green marketing to benefit key stakeholder interests.


Introduction
*Today's, environment awareness of consumers has considerably increased throughout the world. Environmental problems such as global warming and pollutions have become global issues (Shirsavar and Fashkhamy, 2013) and non-biodegradable solid waste, harmful impact of pollutants etc., both marketers and consumers are becoming more and more sensitive to the need for switch to green products and services. It is extensively believed that the shift to "green" may appear to be costly in the short term; it definitely proves to be essential and advantageous, cost-wise too, in the long run. Environmental problems are still the main worry for the whole world and human beings. Air pollution, conservatory effects and ecological unbalances, are the main environmental problems that have occurred till now along with the activities of human being (Sharma, 2011). One of the biggest problems with the green marketing area is that there has been little attempt to academically examine environmental or green marketing. Previous studies focused mainly on green marketing strategies (Devi Juwaheer et al., 2012;Awan, 2011;Fan and Zeng, 2011;Solvalier, 2010). In addition many studies examined relationship between green products and intention (laroche et al., 2001;Paul and Rana, 2012;Lam and Mukherjee, 2005;Gan et al., 2008). Very few studies have examined green marketing mix and purchase intention, for example Ansar (2013) investigated green marketing mix as (ecological price, environmental advertisement, ecological packaging). On the other hand, Wanninayake and Randiwela (2008) studied (green product, green package, green place, green promotion. However this paper aims to investigating the influence of applying green marketing mix elements (product, pricing, distribution and promotion) in Sudan on purchase intention.

Green marketing mix
Every company has its own favorite marketing mix. Some have 4 P's and some have 7 P's of marketing mix. The 4 P's of green marketing are that of a conventional marketing but the challenge before marketers is to use 4 P's in an innovative manner.

Green product
In the past decade, words like green products, sustainable, environmentally friendly, proenvironmental , eco -friendly and ecological have often been used interchangeably by marketers to advise and tempt the consumers as piece of Green Marketing (Gosavi, 2013). Environmentally friendly" refers to products or services that are not harmful to the outdoor environment. However, for more than a decade, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued warnings about products or services marketed as environmentally friendly, environmentally safe. Mainieri et al. (1997) described eco-friendly products as ecologically safe products that can facilitate the long term objective of protecting and preserving our natural habitat namely, environmentally friendly products or environmentally awareness products, are referred to as products designed to lessen the consumption of natural resources required and minimize the adversely environmental impacts through the whole life-cycles of these goods (Tseng and Hung, 2013). A green product is defined as "a product that was manufactured using toxic-free ingredients and environmentally-friendly measures, and which is certified as such by an acknowledged organisation" (Kumar and Ghodeswar, 2015).
Product is the center of green marketing mix and the most essential part whole green marketing strategy. However, it should be considered in brain that green product is not limited to the last object only but involves all the elements of the product, such as the materials it used, the production process, the package of the product, etc. (Fan and Zeng, 2011).
In business, the terms "green product" and "environmental product" are used generally to explain those that effort to protect or boost the natural environment by conserving energy and/or resources and reducing or eliminating use of noxious agents, pollution, and waste (Singh and Pandey, 2012).

Green price
The price is the cost paid for a product. It is a critical element of the marketing mix. The majority of consumers will only be ready to pay a premium if there is a perception on additional product value (Eric, 2007). This value may be enhanced performance, function, design, visual appeal, or taste (Sharma, 2011). Environmental benefits are usually an added plus but will often be the deciding factor between products of equal value and quality (Singh, 2013). Green marketing should get all these facts into consideration though charging a premium price (Bukhari, 2011). According to Hashem and Al-Rifai (2011); the green pricing refers to the price particular in the light of company's policies with regard to environmental consideration imposed by rules and corporation instructions or its initiatives in this regard. However green product often requires higher initial cost but in a long-run, it will be economy (Fan and Zeng, 2011).
Green pricing takes into consideration the people, planet and profit in a method that takes care of the health of employees and communities and ensures efficient productivity. Value can be added to it by changing its emergence, functionality and through customization, etc. (Shil, 2012). It is in some cases higher than the prices of the normal alternatives. A higher price compared to the ordinary alternative can be formative factor for some customers, verifying the accurateness of the products green features. Others do not consider the price at all but choose the environmental friendly alternative (Solvalier, 2010).
In the book by Ottman (1998), it is pointed out that consumers are actually not interested in paying more for a product declared "green". It is for this reason the marketers need to pay emphasis on the pricing of the product. Price is the only element that can create an ideal mix between the returns and profit, rest other elements create costs (Awan, 2011).

Green place
Green place is about managing logistics to cut down on transportation emissions, thereby in effect aiming at reducing the carbon footprint (Shil, 2012), is related to distribution gates use that deal with green products, which are suitable for customers, in terms of facilitating their delivery, and to secure cycling procedures conducting inside environmental conditions and requirements (Hashem and Al-Rifai, 2011). Place represents the location where a product can be purchased. It can mean physical as well as virtual stores. Product distribution should be of the satisfactory channels, and clearly and correctly placed at environmentally safe place where there is no contamination whatever. For green businesses to be established and become competitively priced, companies have to make sure that their distributors are concerned of the environment and establish that they establish a green distribution strategy (Eric, 2007).
Place is not a cost generator factor, it has numerous features that can create revenue and certain outcome. This element of the marketing mix is dealt 'how-to-handle-distance' (Awan, 2011). Logistics is another part of the correlation, because it approaches procurement, material handling, distribution, storage, material revival and disposition. The choice of where and when to make a product obtainable by organization, will have significant impact on the customers. Very few customers will go out of their way to buy green products (Sharma, 2011) merely for the sake of it.
Green distribution is a very delicate operation. Customers must be guaranteed of the 'Ecological nature' of the product. The green environment is a constantly regulated environment and as such high level of compliance is essential when carrying out distribution of green products (Yazdanifard and Mercy, 2011). Few interested customers will go out of their way to buy green products (Singh, 2013).

Green promotion
This refers to providing genuine information about the products in a way that does not harm the materialistic and moral consumers' interests (Hashem and Al-Rifai, 2011). Green promotion involves configuring the tools of promotion, such as advertising, marketing materials, signage, white papers, web sites, public relations, sales promotions, direct marketing and on-site promotions, videos and presentations by keeping people, planet and profits in mind (Shil, 2012). Significant promotion tools green advertising as promotional messages that may appeal to the wants and desires of environmentally concerned consumers (Ankit and Mayur, 2013). The objective of green advertisements is to influence consumers' purchase behavior by encouraging them to buy products that do not hurt the environment and to direct their interest to the positive consequences of their purchase behavior, for themselves as well as the environment (Rahbar and Abdul Wahid, 2011). Marketing communication is defined as a cross-functional activity. Engaging in green promotion, may impact the likelihood that companies' claims are precisely monitored (Lao, 2014).
Green promotion involves communicating information on the environmental commitments and the efforts made by companies to consumers. This element in the green marketing mix includes various activities like paid advertising, public relations, sales promotions, direct marketing and on-site promotions (Fan and Zeng, 2011). Green promotion means transferring actual environmental information to those consumers who are involved in a company's activities. Also, companies' commitment to protect natural resources is for the purpose of attracting the target market (Shirsavar and Fashkhamy, 2013).

Purchase intention
Numerous researches have struggled to discover the relationship between academic theories and empirical behaviors in the customer purchasing intention field because the customers' purchase intention is biform the final consequence beyond perspective, Chen (2013) studied green purchase intention Comparing with Collectivistic (Chinese) and Individualistic (American) Consumers in Shanghai, China. The results indicated that there existed a significance relationship between environmental knowledge, attitudes, environmental concern and social influence and green purchase intention and there is a significant difference between the collectivistic (Chinese) and the individualistic (American) consumers with respect to environmental knowledge, attitudes, social influence and green purchase intention except environmental concern.
Wang (2014) examined the relative importance of the four antecedent variables (external locus of control, collectivism, environmental visibility, and subjective norms) for green purchase intentions. The findings show that unlike collectivism values, environmental visibility, and subjective norms, which exert a positive effect on green product purchase intentions, the external locus of control exerts a negative effect. The results of this study also show the dominant effect that collectivism values exert on green purchase intentions.
According to Arslan and Zaman (2014) purchase intention can be defined as the possibility; a consumer will purchase a product or service in future. A positive purchase intention drives to consumer for actual purchase action or a negative purchase intention restrain to consumer not to purchase that. An increase in purchase intention means an increase in the possibility of purchasing. Researchers can also use purchase intention as an important indicator for estimating consumer behavior. When customers have a positive purchase intention, this forms a positive brand commitment which propels consumers to get an actual purchase action (Wu et al., 2011). The cost of retaining a recent customer is cheaply than prospecting for a new customer (Ihtiyar and Ahmad, 2014).

Theory of planned behaviour and green marketing
The Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) is an important social cognitive model that aims to explain variance in volitional behaviour (Ajzen, 1991) and has proven successful in doing so. It has also been validated in the context of pro environmental behaviour (Yazdanpanah and Forouzani, 2015). The TPB proposes that one's intention to perform a behavior is predicted by attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control. According to the theory of planned behavior, perceived behavioral control, together with behavioral intention, can be used directly to predict behavioral achievement (Ajzen, 1991). The integrative model presented in Fig. 1.
Throughout the years there have been different suggested theories explaining consumer behaviors (Samarasinghe, 2012). Some derive from the social sciences: psychology, sociology, or economics. Others concentrate more on the effects of marketing variables, and stress the effects of external stimuli, such as advertising, physical product differentiation, packaging, promotion, retail availability, point of sale display, direct selling and so on (Kalafatis et al., 1999).

Green marketing mix and purchase intention
There are few researches studies green marketing mix as Hashem and Al-Rifa, (2011) they explore effect of green marketing mix by chemical industries companies in three Arab States in West Asia on consumer's mental image, thus Rakhsha and Majidazar (2011) Evaluated of effectiveness of green marketing mix on consumer satisfaction and loyalty.
According Ansar (2013) developed framework to look at the Impact of Green Marketing on Consumer Purchase Intention (Socio-demographic variables, Price, Environmental advertisement and Ecological packaging) with Green Purchase Intention. The study showed of those variables Positive and significant correlation is found to have positive association with Green purchase intention. Matjaz et al. (2010) explained positive purchase intention to buy an environmentally friendly product in spite of a higher price. Ali et al. (2011) showed that a person with positive intentions to buy green product show higher actual buying rates than those people who have low or no intention of buying green products. Also that competitive price and quality of a green product have positive impact on customers GPB, if they have high and positive intention to purchase them.
Wanninayake and Randiwela (2008) introduced oxford business and economic conference program there are relationship between elements of the mix, namely (product, package, price, place and promotion) and how each of those variables correlates to the purchase decision.
Schiffman and Kanuk (1991) claimed consumer behavior is what displayed by consumers in searching for, purchasing, using, evaluating, and disposing products and services that they expect will satisfy their needs cited by Dolcemascolo and Martina (2010). The actions that people take and choices they make to consume certain products and services or to live in certain ways rather than others all have direct and indirect impacts on the environment (Hai and Mai, 2012).

Theoretical background and hypothesis development
Lack of economic resources of consumers was found to magnify the effect of price and act as a barrier to purchase of green products. However, low price sensitivity of consumers was found to positively affect green purchase behavior. Conversely, high price sensitivity negatively affected. Green purchase behavior and intention of consumers it clear that high price.
Pickett-Baker and Ozaki (2008) found that, except for cleaning products, most consumers cannot identify greener products. This may be because most green messages labels are falling flat and not making an impression in the minds of shoppers. Hence, green communication is a major area of weakness for green marketers. Carlson et al., (1993) results showed affirmed a parallel rise environmental advertising accompanied by greater consumer interest in the environment. In fact, advertising terms such as "recyclable, environmentally friendly, ozone safe, biodegradable" can be see regularly in green advertisement's and consumers are often exposed to such message, whilst some of these message also pertained to consumer resistance. Likewise Mathur and Mathur (2000) argued that consumers were more positive towards environmental messages in advertisements are more are more credible. Thus this study posits that: H.1 There is a positive relationship between green product and purchase intention. H.2 There is a positive relationship between green price and purchase intention. H.3 There is a positive relationship between green place and purchase intention. H.4 There is a positive relationship between green promotion and purchase intention.

Sample and data collection
This study collect data for testing the hypotheses via questionnaire survey of the unit of analysis in this study was an undergraduate business student (MBA) from Universities in Sudan, where convenient sample and self-administrated survey was used to distribute 417 questionnaires. A professional translation to questionnaire was firstly conducted from English into Arabic and back to English. Subsequently, a number of researchers in the same field assessed the correctness and the clearance of questions and measurement items. A sample of questionnaire was secondly developed and sent to five professional academicians to reduce concern regarding the face validity of measures. Several alterations to question wording, modification of items, as well as the format and esthetics of the questionnaire were made for clarity. In stage three, pre-test was conducted upon fifty copies of the surveys distributed to the firms randomly; it reveals that the values of Cronbach's Alpha test for the variables fall above the 0.70, these variables have an acceptable level of reliability (Sekaran, 1992). The survey were collected during august and September 2015, a total of 341 out of 417 questionnaires received from respondents, the overall response rate was 82%. Table 1 presents the questionnaires rate of return this was considered as high rate due to questionnaires given one by one to respondents and in researches used a self-administrated survey (Sekaran, 1992). Those who didn't responded to fill the questionnaire some were mentioned that they were not authorized to fill the questionnaires while others were not transparent in their justifications.

Goodness of measures
This paper employed 5-point Likert scale for all measures, ranging from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree". Measures used in this study adopted and generated from available previous studies. Based on Polonsky (2011), green marketing is the effort by a company to design, promote, price and distribute products in a manner which promotes environmental protection. This paper measured green marketing with 4 items through multidimensional construct to include green product, green price, green place, and green promotion. Purchase intention was measured through adopted from Chiu et al. (2012). Table 2 presents the measurement of the variables of study. Hashem and Al-Rifai (2011) Purchase intention Chiu et al. (2012) Validity and reliability tests as means to assess the goodness of measure of study construct (Sekaran, 1992). The study used exploratory factor analysis for testing the validity and unidimensionality of measures of all variables under study. Factor analysis was done on the 19 items, which was used to measure green marketing mix, and 5 items, which was used to measure purchase intention. Table 3 showed the summary of results of factor analysis on green marketing, purchase intention, and environmental knowledge. In the first run of factor analysis, dropped items (mix6=0.396) were found to have communalities less than 0.50. In the second run of factor analysis, item (im2=0.480) still had communalities value less than 0.50, and was dropped in the next run. In the third run Item (mix13) was dropped in the subsequent run, all assumptions were satisfactory fulfilled. All the remaining items had more than recommended value of at least 0.50 in IM with KMO value of 0.903. Results of factor analysis on purchase intention in the first run of factor analysis all the remaining items had more than recommended value of at least 0.50 in OC with KMO value of 0.805.

Reliability analysis
Reliability is an assessment of the degree of consistency between multiple measurements of variables (Hair et al., 2010). To test reliability this study used Cronbach's alpha as a diagnostic measure, which assesses the consistency of entire scale, since being the most widely used measure. According to Hair et al. (2010), the lower limit for Cronbach's alpha is 0.70, although it may decrease to 0.60 in exploratory research. While Nunnally (1967) considered Cronbach's alpha values greater than 0.60 are to be taken as reliable. The results of the reliability analysis summarized in Table 2 confirmed that all the scales display satisfactory level of reliability (Cronbach's alpha exceed the minimum value of 0.6). Therefore, it can be concluded that the measures have acceptable level of reliability.  Table 3 shows the means and standard deviations of four component of green marketing mix. The table reveals that the students of universities in Sudan concern in green marketing mix. For the product (mean=4.227, standard deviation=0.768), for green promotion (mean=4.222, standard deviation=0.758), for green place (mean=4.14, standard deviation=0.781), for green marketing mix is green price (mean=4.01, standard deviation=0.768). Given that the scale used a 5-point scale (1=strongly disagree, 5=strongly agree) it can be concluded that the students of universities in Sudan is highly concern of green marketing mix. Table 4 shows the means and standard deviations of one component of repurchase intention. Table  reveals that the students of universities in Sudan concern in purchase intention. The means and standard deviations (mean=4.051, standard deviation=0.763).Given that the scale used a 5-point scale (1=strongly disagree, 5=strongly agree).

Data analysis procedures
Multiple regression analysis was used to test the research hypotheses. This technique is appropriate when the researchers' objective is to predict changes independent variables in response to changes in independent variables. Table 5 shows the results of the multiple regression equation testing the influence of the green marketing mix on purchase intention. In addition the results show that the green marketing mix is a positive significantly influenced purchase intention. The results showed that the hypothesis was supported, i.e. there is a positive relationship between green product and purchase intention. (ß=0.196, p<0.01), there is a positive relationship between green price and purchase intention (ß=0.119, p<0.05), there is a positive relationship between green place and purchase intention (ß=0.183, p<0.01) and there is a positive relationship between green place and purchase intention (ß=0.314, p<0.01). This result gives support to hypotheses H1, H2, H3 (green marketing mix and repurchase intention). The results of the Multiple Regressions summarized in Table 5.

Discussion
The finding of this research demonstrates that four forms of green marketing mix namely: (green product, green price, green place and green promotion) have a significant positive relationship with purchase intention. The findings point out that the green marketing in students of universities has a positive relationship with purchase intention, and this finding shows significant relationship between green products and green advertising with purchasing decision, and it also lined with Tang et al. (2014) who showed consumer attitude positively affects purchase intention to green product. In same context demonstrates that green price has a significant positive relationship with purchase intention (Weisstein et al., 2014). Wanninayake and Randiwela (2008) stated that environment friendly products and packages make the significant impact of customer buying decisions and friendly distribution, and promotion with the environment friendly product information will also significantly impact on the buying decisions in selecting products of foods. Ansar (2013) argued that environmental advertisements, price and ecological packaging positively related with the Green purchase intention. The results confirm the significant positive impact of green marketing mix on purchase intention.

Implication to research and practice
This paper investigated the relationship between green marketing mix and the purchase intention. This can contribute to a better understanding of the antecedents of the purchase intention. This study further will add to the theory of planned behavior view by specifying which of attitudes are more influential in creating the customer purchase intention. Moreover, the research is among of the first studies that validate the measurement of green marketing mix (4P) with purchase intention. In addition, this paper will provide better understanding about considering the role of green marketing mix and identify the main constructs it that will effect on consumer purchase intention and to encourage the marketing managers to use the more effective construct in enhancing the relationship with customers.

Conclusion
There are many limitations that must be taken into account in this study. First, the study is focusing on green marketing and purchase intention. Problem relates more empirical grounded insights are needed to test the conceptual factors that ascertains gap between perceived greenness of product food and actual greenness.
The Environmental problems in Sudan are growing rapidly. The increasing economic development, rapid growth of population and growth of industries in Sudan is putting a strain on the environment, infrastructure and the countries natural resources. Industrial pollution, soil erosion, deforestation, rapid industrialization, urbanization, and land degradation are all worsening problems. Environmental pollution is one of the most serious problems facing humanity and other life forms on our planet today. In green marketing, consumers are willing to pay more to maintain a cleaner and greener environment. Green marketing assumes even more importance and relevance in developing countries like Sudan. In future only those companies will reap the greatest reward that innovates with new products, materials, technologies which are ecocentric and address the challenge by walking their talk. This paper certainly closed the gap in the existing literature and the body of knowledge. This study provided empirical evidence that green marketing mix can lead consumers to purchase intention in long terms.

Limitation directions for future research
In this study the researcher has used three dimensions of relationship quality represented in the following: customer satisfaction, customer trust and customer commitment. Future research can adopt more and different dimension such as, cooperation, adaptation, communication and atmosphere that may effect on repurchase intention. The study was based on confined on customers of automotive companies in Sudan. Future research may apply the model on different country. The sample also included only the automotive companies in Sudan, so all the respondents of the questionnaire were only from one culture which would be a great accomplishment if a future a study tested respondents who belonged to different cultures. The study also was exclusive to one type of industry (automotive); it is recommended in future research to adapt the model in different industries such as, electronics, tourism and insurance sectors.