Consumer Buying Behavior Using Exploratory Factor Analysis: A Study on Reusable Hygiene Products Segment

Abstract

Innovative solutions are at the base of any social and environmental problems and become the pull forpeople to pursue ethical consumerism. This capability is even more critical in times of global crises, such as theone caused by COVID-19. The purpose of the study is to identify the proposed personal traits and factors that affect female consumers’ ethical fashion adoption towards reusable handloom Hygiene pads and to provide managerialimplications in the future. A quantitative approach to the study was employed. A self-administered structured questionnaire was used to collect primary data from Kerala, which yielded 302 responses from the southern states of India. Factor analysis and correlation were employed to test the proposed hypothesis. This studysuccessfully classified twenty-five items covering various personal traits like product awareness, productattributes, price sensitivity, past sustainable behavior, perceived obsolescence and consumer innovativeness intofour factors using exploratory factor analysis. These four factors were Environmental consciousness, Priceconsciousness, Novelty-Style Consciousness, and Consumer innovativeness. These factors also show a robust positiverelationship towards ethical fashion adaptation. The result of the study is expected to be valuable for handloom padmanufacturers and producers that are alert about sustainable revenue generation to establish better sustainableinnovations and niche service strategies. Also, it is hoped that this paper will add more inputs to the existingliterature review on females’ ethical fashion adoption intention, especially in handloom fashion-adoptions.